The OECD flagship publication, Education at a Glance, has turned its attention to Sustainable Development Goal 4. This is important for confirming the universality of the agenda. But it also carries implications about how the OECD, as an organization representing rich countries, engages in global processes.

Adjusting Education at a Glance to the SDG era

Few organizations can match the innovative contributions of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to international education over the past 20 years. While the spotlight tends to fall on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), its work on issues ranging from school resources to teacher motivation to early childhood education quality helps generate interesting debates on education policy, monitoring and evaluation. The Global Education Monitoring Report team has referred increasingly to OECD research, as a recent bibliometric analysis has shown.

A common thread links OECD innovations, going back to the…