Dr Tom Lumley, MA Oxon, DipEd La T, MA PhD Melb, was a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research from 2004-2018.

With an early background in teaching English as a second language, Tom has over twenty-five years’ experience in language and literacy test design and development projects, in various languages. He played a leading role in the development of the print and digital reading materials and marker training for the 2009 cycle of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). He has delivered workshops (in English and Spanish) on reading item development and marker training for PISA and related projects in Australia, Europe and Mexico. For many years Tom played a major role in development of the Arabic and English reading and writing materials for both the National Assessment Program and the Abu Dhabi External Measurement of Student Achievement in the United Arab Emirates, as well as in training markers for these assessments. He directed reading test development for a computer-adaptive online tool for literacy and numeracy assessment used for adults in New Zealand, and for materials used in national assessments in the United Kingdom. He prepared a review of best practice in Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in developing countries, in support of a project conducted in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Philippines. Most recently, he was the Domain Leader (Reading and Writing) for development and coder training of the South-East Asia Primary Learning Metrics, a sample assessment of students in Grade 5, administered in multiple languages across Southeast Asia.