In his role as Chair, Professor Tom Schuller (MA, PGCE, DrPhil) oversees every aspect of the PLA Steering Committee, chairing quarterly Committee meetings, and ensuring that PLA functions with a valuable independent voice at its heart.
Tom brings to the PLA significant academic expertise in adult education, alongside a long-standing interest in prison education. In the last decade, he has directed the UK national inquiry into the future of lifelong learning (IFLL) and co-authored its final report, Learning Through Life (NIACE – now Learning and Work Institute, 2009); been the principal editor of UNESCO’s 3rd Global Report on Adult Learning (2016); and published a book on how and why women’s competences are under-rewarded (The Paula Principle). He has chaired the governing board of the Working Men’s College in Camden for eleven years and is a visiting professor at the UCL Institute of Education and the University of Wolverhampton. Tom also served as a member of Prisoners’ Education Trust (PET)’s Learning Matters Advisory Group from 2012.