Director, Centre for Education and International Development, and Commonwealth Professor of Education and Development, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

Professor Christopher Colclough is the Commonwealth Professor of Education and Development in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. Before coming to Cambridge in 2005, he was the founding Director of UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report on Education for All. This annual report charts progress towards the six 'Dakar' goals and the two Millennium Development Goals for education.

His research has been concentrated in the following areas: the economics of education in developing countries; education, planning, and reform in Africa and Asia; gender and schooling in Africa; development theory and adjustment strategy. Whilst at Sussex, he directed a nine-country research and policy analysis programme on gender and primary schooling in Africa, attracting research funding of over US$ 3 million from a multi-donor partnership, comprising the Rockefeller Foundation, NORRAD, Irish Aid, and the World Bank.

He has served as an adviser to UNICEF, UNESCO, and the Rockefeller Foundation on issues related to Education for All, and to many governments - particularly those in southern Africa - on education and economic policy. He has also served as consultant to a wide range of agencies, including the World Bank, DFID, NORRAD, and others, on general matters related to education and economic development.

He is now directing a new Centre for Education and International Development within the Faculty of Education, which seeks to explain patterns of access, quality and outcomes of education in developing countries, and to demonstrate how they can be improved. A current focus for its work is the Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty (RECOUP) - a multi-disciplinary research team comprising seven institutions in India, Pakistan, Ghana, Kenya and UK, led by the Centre. RECOUP is investigating how education affects the lives and livelihoods of people living in poorer communities in the South, and the policy interventions that might best support them.