A review of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's international education surveys: Governance, human capital discourses, and policy debates

Abstract

Given the influential role that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) plays in educational governance, we believe it is timely to provide an in-depth review of its education surveys and their associated human capital discourses. By reviewing and summarizing the OECD's suite of education surveys, this paper identifies the ways in which the OECD frames these surveys and embeds them in human capital discourses. We observe that the OECD's large-scale education surveys contribute to its growing cognitive and normative governance role in the global governance of education. The significance of our analysis lies in highlighting these surveys' truth claims as objective measures of human capital while at the same time pointing to their contested and controversial role in broader educational debates. We focus on three contested terrains: student testing, educational system improvement, and the politics of educational reform. In conclusion, we suggest that there is a need for an alternative paradigm - one that values the significant role that public schools play in building socially cohesive and equitable societies.