Paul Black obituary

My former colleague Paul Black, who has died aged 95, was an educationist known for playing a big part in developing the national curriculum for England, which was introduced in 1989 for primary and secondary schools. As chair of the Task Group on Assessment and Testing, set up by the Conservative government, Paul convinced the then education secretary Kenneth Baker to adopt a set of compulsory subjects that would be assessed mainly by teachers, with external moderation, with expected attainment levels at the end of key stages. Once the system had been agreed, he became deputy chair of the National Curriculum Council from 1989 to 1991. Paul was born in La Cumbre, Colombia, where his British parents, Walter, a commercial agent, and his mother, Susie (nee Burns), a typist, were living. When he was still young the family moved to Rhyl, in north Wales, where he attended Rhyl grammar school. After a degree in physics at Manchester University he gained a PhD at Cambridge University and then obtained a lecturing post in physics at Birmingham University in 1956. He married Mary Weston, a history teacher whom he had met through the Catholic church, in 1957. As a lecturer in Birmingham, Paul became involved in creating the Nuffield A-level physics course and in 1974 he was appointed to a personal chair in physics at the university. In 1976 he moved to London as head of the Centre for Science Education, based at Chelsea College, University of London (later merged into King’s College London), where he directed a large-scale national survey of science attainment in schools. In 1983 he was appointed OBE and two years later he became head of the King’s College London school of education, raising its profile in research, remaining there until he retired in 1995. His final achievement was to pioneer Assessment for Learning, an informal organisation supporting teachers with classroom methods of gathering feedback from students. In retirement he worked on several national and international research projects, including as a visiting professor at Stanford University. Between 1953 and 2018 he wrote more than 230 peer-reviewed research papers, more than 120 booklets, book chapters and books, and in excess of 500 articles and letters. Having been president of the Union of Catholic Students while at Cambridge, he was later chair of the Laity Commission and chair of governors of various Catholic schools in Birmingham and London. In 1974 he was appointed a Knight of St Gregory by Pope Paul VI. Mary died in 2025. Paul is survived by their five children, 14 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.