More than meets the eye: uncovering the evolution of the OECD’s institutional priorities in education

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, since the launch of its flagship study the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has become a behemoth of transnational influence on education policy making. To better understand the evolution of the OECD’s perspective on education and the importance of PISA within the OECD’s overall publications, I analysed over 900 OECD publications on education with a topic modelling approach. The analysis revealed that contrary to popular belief, the OECD is a multi-centric organization with various agendas in education policy making, focusing on economic changes, higher education, management, planning, and budgeting. PISA made up only 12% of the overall text corpus and was therefore far less discussed than expected. This is in sharp contrast to the general impression held, namely that the OECD’s work in education mostly relates to PISA. Therefore, this study reveals that the OECD has a far broader agenda than anticipated. This paper acts as a systematic review of OECD literature to gain insights into its institutional objectives.