4: OECD's Role in the Lifelong Learning Policy Arena: Neoliberal Management of Lifelong Learning Through Policy Prototype and Infrastructure

This chapter delves into how the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has managed its role as a standard-setter in the global governance of education, with a focus on lifelong learning policy. Specifically, this chapter demonstrates that the OECD has maintained its traditional role by producing policy prototypes (e.g., policy texts and frameworks) and policy infrastructure (e.g., Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, Education at a Glance). By doing so, this chapter aims to shed light on how OECD's policy prototypes and frameworks have shaped the neoliberal management of lifelong learning policy discourses. As noted above, UNESCO first developed the policy idea of lifelong learning during the 1960s. Following UNESCO's lead, the OECD also drafted its own lifelong learning policy concept, known as recurrent education in 1973 – i.e., “Recurrent Education: A Strategy for Lifelong Learning.” Given its traditional role as a standard-setter, it was unusual for the OECD to be the latecomer. However, the OECD successfully caught up in the policy debate on lifelong learning in the 1970s, and later in the 1990s, its policy discourse on lifelong learning began to attract significant attention from policy circles through a series of meetings of the OECD Education Committee at the ministerial level internationally. Since then, the OECD has managed its role as a standard setter in lifelong learning policy by demonstrating policy prototypes and establishing infrastructures. This chapter provides detailed historical accounts of how this occurred. In doing so, this chapter reveals how neoliberal thinking has permeated the policy discourses of lifelong learning on a global scale.