Nicholas Burnett

Managing Director
Results for Development Institute

Nicholas Burnett has over 30 years of experience handling education and currently leads the global education portfolio of Results for Development Institute. His work centers on addressing tough, often neglected challenges in the field of global education. Current areas of activity include non-state education (through the Center for Education Innovations), education financing and innovative financing, the linkage between secondary education and skills for employment (especially for the informal economy), out-of-school children and early childhood education.

Burnett joined R4D after a distinguished career including UNESCO, the World Bank, the British government and his own consulting firm. At UNESCO, before becoming ADG, he was Director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, an independent team responsible for monitoring progress toward the EFA goals and the education Millennium Development Goals. At the World Bank, where he worked for 20 years, particularly on Africa and on the Caribbean, he was responsible for the Bank’s education policy paper in 1995 and managed its education, health and social protection work in 16 countries in West and Central Africa from 1997-2000 with a portfolio of about $2 billion.

He was educated as an economist at Oxford (BA), Harvard (Henry Fellow) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (MA, Ph D) and is currently a visiting Special Professor of International Education Policy at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.