Academic biography

Eemer Eivers is the Director of the DCU Futures Evaluation, under the aegis of the Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection (EQI). She is also a Senior Research Associate with DCU's Educational Disadvantage Centre. Prior to leaving the Educational Research Centre in 2018, she led Ireland’s participation in multiple large-scale assessments (PIRLS, TIMSS, PISA, Ireland’s National Assessments), conducted multiple programme evaluations, and led the development of a variety of standardised assessments for primary and post-primary school students. Since then, she has worked as a consultant with the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), Malta’s Ministry for Education, and the UK’s National Foundation for Educational Research, as well as with many Irish agencies.

Particular interests include comparisons of educational systems, educational assessments, literacy, educational disadvantage and early school leaving. Malta’s new 10-year policy to combat early school leaving draws heavily on her work, and she subsequently advised on how to adapt Ireland’s HSCL model of support for Maltese schools. She was also a member of Northern Ireland’s Literacy and Numeracy Taskforce, and of the panel that developed the Common Funding Scheme (the mechanism by which Northern Ireland’s education budget is allocated and distributed).