Thematic Session 1 : Implementing Quality School Evaluations and Inspections

Dr. Ali bin Abdelkhalig AlKarni, Director-General of the Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States, received his PhD degree in Quantitative Methods in Education - Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States. His MS and BA degrees were also from the US.
He worked for 36 years in different educational positions. He worked first as a teacher at primary, intermediate and secondary schools, a supervisor and then a Director-General for the Educational Research & Information Centre, Ministry of Education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He was appointed as a Secretary-General for the Supreme Committee for the Educational Policy in the Kingdom.
Dr. AlKarni then moved to the private sector where he became General Overseer for the Kingdom Private Schools, , and then he was appointed with a Royal Assent a Director-General for the Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States.
Al Karni received a number of awards including; HRH Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdel Aziz Award for Academic Excellence in 1991, University President Award for Public Services in 1980 from Portland State University, and the Making IT Happen Award by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Denver, Colorado in June 2016. AlKarni wrote a number of researches and articles that were published in many peer-reviewed newspapers and magazines

Moderator for Discussion – Day One – Thematic Session 1

Bill Maxwell is working as an independent educational consultant after an extensive career leading educational change and quality improvement at national level. He was HM Chief Inspector of Education for Scotland from 2010 to 2017, and led the creation and development of Education Scotland, a new quality improvement agency established in 2011 to integrate both inspection and improvement support functions. As Chief Executive of Education Scotland he led the programme of national support for the implementation of Scotland’s curricular reform programme, Curriculum for Excellence. He was previously HM Chief Inspector of Education for Wales from 2008 to 2010, where he led reform of the national inspectorate, Estyn and advised on wider system reform. Most recently Bill has been undertaking work for the European Commission, including developing proposals for a European framework for quality assurance strategies and providing support for reform of quality assurance in Malta.

In his career at the Netherlands Inspectorate, he had different jobs. Examples of his work are developing and responsible implementing new inspectorate frameworks, developing job profiles for inspectors, head of the application committee to hire new inspectors and analysts, trainer of inspectors on strategic matters, 12 years head of the department vocational education of the inspectorate, head of the crisis/incidents team, special expertise on quality assurance and the assessment of the boards of schools.

Before he was school director, member of the Dutch national committee for student assessment and evaluation, chairman of the national committee of student assessment on management studies in vocational, higher education and worked as a management consultant in education, consulting on developing and implementing new educational concepts.

Professor Hanada Taha Thomure is the Endowed Professor of Arabic Language and director of the Arabic Language Center for Research & Development at Zayed University, UAE.  Previously, she served as Acting Dean of Bahrain Teachers College, University of Bahrain where she joined as Associate Dean in 2010.

She has close to 30 years of experience in teacher preservice preparation and in-service training, Arabic Language curriculum design, developing and reviewing national literacy strategies, and literacy coaching.  She designed the first system for leveling Arabic texts which is currently used by regional and international publishers to level their Arabic children’s books.  More than 8000 books have been leveled free of charge with a grant from Arab Thought Foundation.  She is the senior author for Pearson’s first Arabic language Arts K-9.  Her research is in the field of Arabic language teaching and learning, Arabic children’s literature and teacher preparation.

She holds a PhD in Education from the University of New Orleans, USA (2001) and an M.A. in Educational Psychology and Counseling and B.A in Social & Behavioral Sciences with a minor in Arabic from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon (1997, 1988 respectively). 

Dr Mohammed H alghamdi works as CEO of National Center for School Evaluation and Excellence (NCSEE). He received Bachelor of Science from King Khalid University 1993; Master of Arts in Educational Administration, from King Saud University 1999; Master of Science in Measurement, Evaluation and Statistics University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA. He holds Ph.D. in Leadership and Educational Reform Policies, from University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA 2018. Dr Alghamdi specializes in Educational Policy Analysis, Including Professional Capital, and Educational Planning and Evaluation Policies. He worked on a number of national educational projects, the most prominent of which were: Evaluating the ten-year plan to develop educators' capabilities in the evaluation (Ministry of Education 2009-2019), Evaluating policies of professional learning societies in Saudi education; Evaluating policies of selection, training and retaining teachers; and the politics of pressure groups.