Ben Jensen

Background

About Ben Jensen

Dr Ben Jensen is CEO of Melbourne-based consultancy Learning First. He has advised numerous education systems in Australia and around the world on education strategy and implementation, school and system reform that continuously improves teaching and learning, distributed leadership in schools and across systems, data, evaluation and accountability systems, and teacher and leader development. Ben’s recent reports, including Beyond PD and Not So Elementary, have received international attention and changed policy in a number of systems. Ben is an adviser to the Aspen Institute’s Urban District Leadership Network, the Victorian Minister’s Expert Advisory Group, and the NSW Education Statistics and Evaluation Advisory Committee. He has served on the Australian Government Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group and on OECD expert groups for their Program of International Assessment (PISA) and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS). Before founding Learning First in 2014, Ben was Director of the School Education Program at the Grattan Institute, Australia’s leading independent policy think tank, where he wrote the influential report, Catching up: learning from the best school systems in East Asia. He also spent five years at the OECD, where he conducted international research on education policy and school and teacher effectiveness. Ben has a PhD in Economics from the University of Melbourne.