Carol Taylor is an education consultant with more than 40-years’ experience in school education. She is recognised across Australia as an expert in teaching and educational standards, and in school-based assessment and evaluation.
As the former chief executive of the NSW Board of Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES) she was responsible for implementing major reforms in the areas of HSC assessment and teaching standards.
Carol has been an advisor in education policy to the former NSW Education Minister, Adrian Piccoli. She was a founding member of the NSW Education Standards Authority Board, and is on the board of the Public Education Foundation, which provides hundreds of scholarships every year to public school students who are struggling financially.
Carol moved to Australia as a child, emigrating from England with her parents. She became a first-in-family university student after receiving a scholarship to attend The University of Sydney in the the 1970s to study teaching, and has been committed to the idea of equal opportunity in education throughout her career.
She started teaching history and English in 1976, before being offered a full-time position at the then NSW Board of Studies in 1988 to develop the English test in the School Certificate.
Carol’s role evolved until she was responsible for 3000 English markers at HSC marking centres, where she discovered a passion for assessment and testing that led to her undertaking a master's degree in educational measurement and psychometric testing.
In 2009, Carol was promoted to CEO of the NSW Board of Studies, focusing on teaching and educational standards. She stepped down from this position in December 2014, after successfully overseeing the merger of the board with the NSW Institute of Teachers (of which she was concurrently acting chief executive during 2013) to form BOSTES, and becoming its first chief executive.
