About Us

Professor James Tooley - Director - James has been working in the area of educational development for over 25 years when he first moved to Zimbabwe after leaving university to become a maths teacher. Having been a researcher at Oxford University and a senior researcher at Manchester he moved to his current post as Professor of Education Policy at Newcastle University in 1998. Private schools for low-income families are Tooley's passion. He works to assist in improving entrepreneurs' access to loans and improvement of the curriculum for budget private schools. Tooley strives to bring private schools for low income families to the top of the agenda when discussing "Education for All".

Dr Pauline Dixon - Director of Research - Pauline was one of the founder members of the E.G. West Centre in 2002. She gained her PhD at Newcastle University researching private schools in the low-income areas of Hyderabad, India in 2003. Since then she has been instrumental in the research carried out by the E.G. West Centre in Asia, Africa and South America and a crucial part of the award winning team at the Centre. She acted as the International Research Co-ordinator on the John Templeton Foundation research from 2003-2005 and led on the Orient Global research from 2007-2009. She is also the leading academic on modules offered on the International Development and Education pathway of the MEd. Dixon has many journal articles, book chapters, and publications to her name and is a popular speaker at international conferences.

Professor Sugata Mitra - Having worked in the private sector with NIIT, Delhi for many years Sugata moved to Newcastle University to become Professor of Educational Technology in 2006. Mitra is well known for the "Hole in the Wall" experiment. Mitra is working on how technology can be implemented in private schools in slum areas in India. His projects now also included looking at the use of technology and its impact in North East of England schools.

James Stanfield - James Stanfield was one of the founder members of the EG West Centre and was invited to West's house in Canada to bring back Eddie's library to be housed in the EG West Centre. Stanfield has worked in Kenya, researching into the introduction of free primary education in 2003 and the effect this had on the slum of Kibera and the private schools that already existed there. He has also appeared on radio talking about his research into Scottish Education. He has several publications on private schools and writes a quarterly column for the IEA.

Dr Barrie Craven - Barrie Craven is currently a visiting scholar in the E.G West Centre. Barrie formally was a Reader at the Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University and specialised in financial and public sector economics.