Since its establishment in 1961 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has gained increasing influence in the global field of education (Jakobi, 2012; Martens, 2007). Today, the organisation includes 35 member states which are primarily industrialised, Western countries – a majority of them European – due to which it has been criticised of being a ‘rich man’s club’ (Istance, 1996) and a ‘management consulting firm for governments’ (Salzman, 2000). Much research has examined the role and influence of this organisation in relation to its member states but little attention has been paid to the relationship and influence of the OECD on non-member states. However, within the area of education, the organisation has, from the beginning, focused on the inclusion of and cooperation with non-member states as well (Sellar & Lingard, 2013; Woodward, 2009); a recent example of this is the Programme for International Student Assesment (PISA) (2000-) in which 72 countries participated in 2015. In 2007 the OECD launched a programme called “Enhanced Engagement” with the goal of strengthening the cooperation with five non-member states: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa (Clifton & Fuentes, 2014; OECD, 2011). This paper examines the relationship between OECD and non-member states within the field of education exemplified by two of those countries: China and Brazil. The case of Brazil is particularly interesting as the government has aligned its educational policies with the OECD recommendations (Kauko, Centeno, Candido, Shiroma, & Klutas, 2016) and the country currently has a vice chair position on the governing board of PISA (OECD, 2018). The OECD’s relationship with China is different. Since the launch of the “open door” policy in 1978 and the turn towards a more market-oriented economy, the Chinese education system have increasingly been influenced by global actors and organisations (Guo & Guo, 2016; Schulte, 2016). The OECD cooperates with China in multiple ways: by co-organizing conferences with Chinese partners (e.g. the Chinese Ministry of Education), publishing reports in which China is compared to other economies, offering third party assessment of Chinese education and through Chinese participation in the PISA programme in which the municipality of Shanghai took part in 2009 and the municipalities of Beijing, Jiangsu and Guangdong joined in 2015 (OECD, 2016; PISA, 2016; Whitman, 2004). Thus, the aim of the paper is to examine the impact of OECD on Chinese and Brazilian education policy initiatives.

The theoretical framework for analyzing the impact of OECD is inspired by the concepts of ‘transfer’, ‘translation’ and ‘transformation’ borrowed from Cowen (2009). By analyzing archival materials collected in national archives of China and Brazil as well as the OECD archives in Paris, the paper examines the impact of OECD on educational polices in non-member states focusing on particular policies in the countries of Brazil and China.

The paper contributes to the research of the impact of OECD on non-member states by analysing two cases: China and Brazil. A comparison of the impact of OECD educational ideas and policies in these countries will exemplify how the organization cooperates and influences non-member states and the findings will enhance our understanding of the role international organizations play in the global education field.

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