Audrey Brown was Deputy Director at the Department for Education until 2013 with overall responsibility for providing analysis and research for the development of policy for schools. She managed a team of statisticians, operational researchers, social researchers and economists and worked closely with policy advisers to promote evidence-based policy development.
Audrey was a council member of the Royal Statistical Society from 2004 to 2008 and chair of the Economic and Social Data Service from 2008 to 2012. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2007.
During her career, Audrey has also been responsible for publishing statistics on further and higher education, and education finance, and she worked for a time at the Further Education Funding Council. Before moving into education Audrey worked with social statistics, managing the ONS Longitudinal Study and working on household composition, fertility and the Census. She also had a spell at Eurostat.