We’re pleased to announce that Dr. Aaron Benavot is the new director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report. Dr Benavot brings decades of experience in global education policy and comparative research to the Report team, including four years as a senior policy analyst for the Report. Most recently, he has been professor in the School of Education at the University at Albany-SUNY. He will take up his new position at UNESCO’s headquarters in May 2014.

Dr Benavot is stepping into the role of director at an important time. The EFA Global Monitoring Report team has completed 11 extensively researched reports on Education for All. On the back of this experience, it has a central role in assisting in the framing and specification of new global education goals and their indicators up until 2015 and beyond.

Dr Benavot will begin by leading the preparation of the 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report, for which an open consultation is now in process. This next Report will assess how successful the EFA movement has been since its conception, and identify policies that have boosted progress towards the EFA goals. This assessment will provide evidence-based lessons for the framing of post-2015 education goals and strategies.

Previously, as senior policy analyst for the EFA Global Monitoring Report, Dr Benavot contributed to the development and drafting of four Reports: Literacy for Life (2006), Strong Foundations: Early Childhood Care and Education (2007), Education for All by 2015: Will We Make It? (2008) and Overcoming Inequality: Why Governance Matters (2009).

Dr Benavot has also published extensively on educational policy and practice, focusing on the evolution of basic education, post-2015 education policies, as well as the linkages between education, economic development and political democratization.

We hope you will join us in welcoming him to the post. Dr Benavot’s extensive comparative education scholarship and wealth of experience in international education policy-making will be hugely valuable for the EFA Global Monitoring Report in the lead up to 2015 and beyond.