Page 58 - Education in a Digital World

International Organisations 45

Historically, this organisation originated in the 1948 ‘European Recovery
Programme’ (commonly known as the Marshall Plan) which was put in place
by the US to support the economic reconstruction of post-war Europe. This
financed the founding of the ‘Organisation for European Economic Cooperation’,
which in 1961 then became the OECD. As its history suggests, the actions of the
OECD centre primarily on matters of economic efficiency and economic growth
amongst already economically developed and wealthy countries. However, as with
many international organisations, OECD’s actions also place an emphasis on the
importance of extra-economic issues, not least elements of social infrastructure such
as education. Indeed, although different in their exact motivation and focus,
most intergovernmental and supranational organisations could be said to now
accord “greater importance to education than ever before” (Rizvi and Lingard
2010, p.131).
In forming agendas and perspectives relating to the economic and societal role of
education, organisations such as OECD, World Bank and the like seek to play a
number of different roles within the global economy and global polity. On the one
hand, these organisations clearly seek “the control and orientation of international
trade in their favour” (Dale and Robertson 2002, p.10), and therefore strive to act
as significant agents in “both powering and steering the forces that make up global
capitalism”. In this sense, these organisations often operate as policy actors in
their own right. This can involve practical interventions – for example, directly
investing in programmes and initiatives, engaging in technical reporting and
statistical work, acting as sponsors for academic research and hosting debate amongst
networks of policymakers, researchers and consultancies. In a less direct manner
these organisations often also seek to act as subtle ‘spheres of influence’ and ‘back-
stage’ manipulators of global discourses about education (Rizvi and Lingard 2010,
p.128). Thus as Jones (2009) observes, an organisation such as the World Bank
could be said to play a range of roles in shaping educational policies, processes and
practices, i.e.:

shaping economic and social policymaking of governments around the world;
being instrumental in forging policies that see education as a precursor to
modernisation;
serving as a major purveyor of Western ideas about how education and the
economy are, or should be, related;
being an influential proponent of the rapid expansion of formal education
systems around the world – in particular, financing much of that expansion.

From a globalist perspective, these organisations could be argued to act as major
contributors to the formation of a ‘global culture’ in education which works for a
common good. However, from a more sceptical position these organisations could
be argued to act as agents of the neoliberal project where “capital serves both as a