The birth of the OECD’s education policy area

This chapter provides a historical account of the OECD’s official involvement in education policy and offers an analysis of the OECD’s quick emergence as a policy actor in the field. It explains how education moved from a peripheral position in the OECD to the focus of a specialized autonomous centre (CERI—the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation) and of a policy committee. Drawing on a systematic analysis of unpublished internal documents, it traces events within the organization before and after the CERI’s creation. It shows that the OECD was envisaged from the onset as a global organization. This institutional nature enabled it to quickly emerge as a policy actor in education, once the right moment arrived. This study draws inspiration from Peter Hall’s theory of policy changes to explain how CERI’s creation triggered a process of change that led the OECD to officially start working on issues of education policy.