Verner Bickley MBE; Ph.D; M.A; Dip. Ed; LRAM; LGSM; FIL; FRSA, is Education Adviser to the International Examinations Board, Trinity College London (HK) and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the English-Speaking Union, Hong Kong. He is the Language Adviser for the whole series, and author of a subset of the series for the Oxford University Press primary English course, On Target, for Hong Kong, China and Thailand.

Dr Bickley retired from the Hong Kong Government as Assistant Director of Education and Director of the Institute of Language in Education in 1992. Previously, he served as Director of the Culture Learning Institute and Chairman of the Directors of the East-West Center in Hawaii. He held a concurrent appointment as Full Professor of English at the University of Hawaii. Dr Bickley was also President of the Hawaii Branch of the English-Speaking Union and he is now Chairman of the Executive Committee of the English-Speaking Union in Hong Kong.

Earlier in his career, Dr Bickley was a member of the Singapore Education Department and a British Council Officer in Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia and Japan. He has had extensive radio and television experience with the BBC Far Eastern Station, the NHK in Japan, the Burma Broadcasting Service, Radio Republik Indonesia and Radio Singapore. He was anchorman in an Open University of Hong Kong 13-part English language TV series for Cable TV Hong Kong, and he has played cameo roles in three Chinese language films, Bodyguard from Beijing (Jet Li), Thunderbolt (Jackie Chan) and City of Glass (Leon Lai).

Dr Bickley has been an adjudicator in many Speech and Drama Festivals in several countries, including (for 20 successive years) the Hong Kong Schools' Music and Speech Association's annual Speech Festival. He has adjudicated at Public-Speaking Competitions organised by China Daily in Suzhou, Nanjing, Beijing, Shanghai and Macao. As Chairman of The English-Speaking Union in Hong Kong, he has co-organised, with the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups, the annual Standard-Chartered Public-Speaking Competition for young people aged between 16 and 20 years. In 2006, this Competition has attracted over 900 entries.

Dr Bickley studied Speech and Drama under the late Greta Colson. In different countries, he has directed amateur productions of Sir John Vanbrugh's The Relapse, Shakespeare's, As You Like It, Tchekov's, The Proposal, John Gay's, The Beggar's Opera and Benjamin Britten's, Let's Make an Opera (The Little Sweep). In Hong Kong, he has played a variety of roles in a number of productions, including Duncan, Siward and the Porter in Macbeth, the Priest in Hamlet, Emperor Chop Suey (in Aladdin), John of Gaunt (in Richard II); the surgeon in Making Boobs (for the professional, Square Peg Theatre), the Judge in Hello Dolly (Hong Kong Singers), and President Roosevelt in Annie (Hong Kong Singers).

Dr Bickley has written more than twenty textbooks and books and numerous articles on international education, language and culture, and language pedagogy. He has also written dozens of scripts for radio and TV, including scripts for the BBC World Service; NHK, Tokyo; Radio Singapore and Radio Television Hong Kong ("Letter from Hong Kong").

He is a Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (Speech and Drama) and a Licentiate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Speech and Drama).

Dr Bickley's most recent book, Language and the Young Learner in Hong Kong (2004), is a critical survey of kindergarten education in the SAR. His book, English for the Office, published by the Commercial Press, is designed specifically to address the needs of Chinese students entering the workplace in China, after completing secondary education. In 2001, Dr Bickley published Searching for Frederick (Asia 2000), a partly-autobiographical guide to life-writing, focusing in particular upon Dr Frederick Stewart, the founding Principal of the Central School (now Queen's College) in Hong Kong.

Dr Bickley has a particular interest in curriculum reform. He was a member of the Ford Foundation Curriculum Development project and, for some years, was leader of one section of the American team that participated in the five-nation (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and the United States) curriculum development project ("The Pacific Circle"). sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).