Rhiannon Wynn

Experience

• 

  Australian Government Department of Education and Training

  Dec 2013 - Feb 2015

  As part of the department's financial assurance team for schools, my work involved policy development focusing on improving financial assurance for recurrent grants by collecting robust financial information, monitoring and compliance. Key achievements included streamlining and simplifying compliance arrangements for schools who did not comply with their financial accountability requirements under the Act; contributing to policy analysis relating to the financial monitoring of non-government schools; supervision and leadership of staff; and examining the regulatory obligations on schools to ensure regulatory controls are sufficient but not onerous.A major component of this role involved development of the Financial Acquittal process for funding provided under the education legislation and overseeing the IT development of a new software platform that needed to manage the acquittal of $20 billion of schools funding. Show less Secondment to work with officers from the Department of Education and Training and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on policy development and analysis for the pilot of the New Colombo Plan Mobility Program.The New Colombo Plan Mobility Program provides funding to Australian universities and consortia to support Australian undergraduate students to participate in semester-based or short-term study, internships, mentorships, practicums and research in 40 host locations across the Indo-Pacific region.http://dfat.gov.au/people-to-people/new-colombo-plan/mobility-program Show less

  • Assistant Director, Financial Assurance and Case Management

    Jul 2014 - Feb 2015

  • Policy officer, New Colombo Plan

    Dec 2013 - Jul 2014
• 

  Australian Government Department of Education

  Jan 2015 - now

  I am currently the A/g Director of the National Assessment Program (NAP) team, with responsibility for managing the policy and implementation for Australia's involvement in all aspects of the international NAP (including the OECD's PISA and the IEA's TIMSS and PIRLS programmes) and the policy for the domestic NAP, including NAPLAN. As the Australian Government representative on the International Assessments Joint National Advisory Committee, I manage relationships with our national project manager, state and territory education departments and a range of international stakeholders, including the OECD. My team engages with data to explain to non-technical audiences how to create policy based on the best domestic and international evidence. I enjoy the challenge of finding connections between data that create deeper meaning and distilling this to key evidence that can be shared with colleagues throughout my department to shape strategic policy thinking.Over the last seven years in the Australian Government public service I have learned to be an agile, creative thinker who specialises in the development of strategic policy. I enjoy the challenge of taking a mental helicopter view of issues, identifying all the puzzle pieces and seeing how they could fit together into a more optimal design. I have undergone training in design thinking and apply these principals in my policy work as well as from a leadership capacity mentoring other staff.With a background in law and arts, I am a communicator at core. I love to engage with people on the big issues and come at a problem from multiple angles. I apply my skills in strategic thinking, communication, research and editing in my day to day job to build strong relationships and create evidence-based policy Show less In this position I worked as the Assistant Director with policy responsibility for managing Australia's involvement in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). As the lead policy expert in the PISA team, I manage relationships with our national project manager, states and territory education departments and the OECD. Although my background is not in statistics, I work with data daily, interpreting data from psychometricians and statisticians in a policy context. I enjoy the challenge of finding connections between data that create deeper meaning and distilling this to key evidence that can be shared with colleagues throughout my department to shape strategic policy thinking. Show less Policy development and programme management for Endeavour Mobility Grants programme. Administered by the Department of Education and Training, Endeavour Mobility Grants support engagement between Australia and the rest of the world through student mobility. Funding is provided to Australian tertiary education providers, which in turn provide grants to Australian students to undertake mobility projects globally.The objectives of Endeavour Mobility Grants are to:* support students to study overseas as part of their qualification, where the study will provide credit or count towards the course requirements for the Australian course of study in which the student is enrolled* create opportunities for students to engage globally with other students, institutions and employers* strengthen institutional capacity to collaborate and partner with overseas education providers and organisations.https://internationaleducation.gov.au/ Show less

  • Director, International Assessments and Phonics

    Aug 2019 - now

  • Director, National Assessment Program

    Dec 2017 - Aug 2019

  • Assistant Director

    Jan 2014 - Nov 2017

  • Policy Specialist, Endeavour Mobility Grants

    Jan 2015 - Nov 2015