Although it claims to be a ‘global yardstick’ of education quality, the impact of PISA in middle- and low-income nations has not been strong. As UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals mobilised a global effort to tackle education quality and accountability, the OECD decided that, to remain relevant as a global institution, it could no longer focus just on high-income nations (Schleicher and Costin, 2015). It decided “to define global learning indicators that can be measured and tracked on a global scale over time” (Ward & Zoido, 2015, p. 21). To this end, it developed an ‘enhancement of PISA called PISA for Development (PISA-D). In 2016-2017, PISA-D surveys were conducted in eight countries across South Asia, Africa and South America. However, developing PISA-D was not simply a technical matter of adapting survey items to suit low-income nations, or finding a way to reach ‘out-of-school’ 15-year-olds. The psychometric and analytical principles of PISA had largely been western-centric and designed with a different kind of test-taker, and a different kind of social and political milieu in mind (Adams & Cresswell, 2016; Lockheed et al., 2015). There are also a number of ‘political’ challenges – lack of political will, corruption, poor regulatory systems etc. – that prevented the proper administration and use of international assessment data (Lockheed, Porkic-Bruer, & Shadrova, 2015). These had to be addressed. The OECD also had to convince the international development community that it was capable of participating effectively in low-income nations. In this paper, I explore these material-semiotic processes by focusing on three issues: a. the forging of alliances within the global development and assessment community; b. the brokering of funding and technical partnerships; and the ‘capacity building’ and political work that was required. The empirical data comes from a case study in Cambodia, and is based on interviews with officials in the Cambodian government, OECD officials, PISA contractors, officials from development partners such as UNESCO and the World Bank, and from relevant policy documents. This paper is relevant to European scholars as many European nations are involved in supporting major education reforms in low-income nations. The theoretical exploration of how new programs such as PISA-D establish themselves by creating an entire assemblage to steady their position is relevant to a range of situations within education and beyond.

Lockheed, M., Porkic-Bruer, T., & Shadrova, A. (2015). Experience of Middle-Income Countries Participating in PISA 2000-2015. Paris: OECD UNESCO. (2015a). Education 2030 Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action. UNESCO Ward, M., & Zoido, P. (2015). PISA for Development. ZEP - Zeitschrift für internationale Bildungsforschung und Entwicklungspädagogik, 38(4), 21-25.