One of the main characteristics of global discourses on educational policy is the extended and uncritical view of the expected effects that educational expansion can have on the reduction or even the elimination of poverty. A number of international organisations like the World Bank, the OECD or the EU itself underline in their policy analyses and policy recommendations that education is the strategy to fight poverty and to ensure the social inclusion of the poor. This paper will reflect on two different aspects to cast doubt on this taken for granted relationship. On the one hand, the paper will highlight how the education-poverty relationship have become a crucial aspect on which global organisations construct their mission and legitimate their role as cohesive institutions for global welfare. On the other hand, it will discuss on some structural aspects that are usually absent of the education- poverty relationship, especially those that invert the causal relationship (that is, what poverty does to education instead of what education does to poverty), to show what is missing in the political agenda.