Description: This paper deals with inquiring the influence of the OECD on education policy making in member states and beyond. It starts with introducing the structure of the OECD and the place of education policy within the organisation, as well as it highlights some changes over the last three decades. In a second step, the organisation's education policy programmes are examined and policy-making within the organisation is traced, e.g. in the cases of 'lifelong learning' or education indicators. In a last step, relying on the example of 'lifelong learning', the success of the organisation is assessed through a quantitative large-n analysis. The regression analysis shows that the OECD has a significant influence on national education policy development in the countries. The paper builds upon existent publications that stem from a research project of the collaborative research centre 'Transformations of the State' at the University of Bremen. Methods applied are e.g. document analysis, descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis.