Ro Parsons

Dr Ro Parsons has had a wide-ranging career in education working in a range of roles: teacher in secondary school, early childhood education, and parent education settings; secondary school principal; in-service teacher educator; and leadership facilitator.  As a Review Officer in the Education Review Office (ERO), she evaluated the quality of education provision in primary and secondary schools and early childhood education centres.

Ro has held a number of senior leadership roles in the Ministry of Education and ERO.  Most recently Ro held the role of Deputy Chief Executive: Methodology and Professional Practice (ERO).

Ro’s key areas of expertise are school and system improvement; educational leadership and management; policy development, implementation, and evaluation; professional learning and development; and evaluation.

Ro’s academic and research interests relate to the field of evaluation.  The research associated with her Master of Educational Administration (First Class Hons) and Doctor of Education focuses on evaluation in the Aotearoa New Zealand schooling context. She has designed courses and taught evaluation at the post-graduate level.

In her role as Chief Education Advisor: Schooling Policy in the Ministry of Education, Ro managed the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) Review of Evaluation and Assessment in New Zealand.

In ERO she led the development of a suite of evaluation publications including School Evaluation Indicators: Effective Practice for Improvement and Learner Success (2016); Capabilities for High-Quality Education Evaluation (2017); Ngā Ara Whai Hua: Quality Framework for Improvement in Early Childhood Services (2019) and related resources; and Principles of Practice: Education Evaluation for Improvement in Schools and Early Childhood Education Services (2021).

Ro has presented papers and workshops in international and national contexts and published in areas related to mathematics education, teacher professional learning and development, system change and improvement, and evaluation. She is particularly interested in post-graduate teaching, supervision and writing focused on evaluation.