The OECD and IELS: Redefining early childhood education for the 21st century
2019
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has unveiled plans to
move into the field of early childhood education through the introduction of the International
Early Learning Study (IELS), a new comparative test of five-year olds that is being piloted in three
nations. This article explores the dynamics of this new project and serves three purposes. First,
we situate IELS within the OECD’s broader agenda in education governance, and with regard to
its existing comparative assessments, namely the Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA). Second, we identify the main commentaries and critiques of the OECD’s
activity and assessments, specifically relating to PISA. In the concluding section we anticipate a
possible future when such tests are established in the early childhood education sector and
reflect on its possible impact. We argue that the advent of comparative testing of five-year
olds heralds an attempt to introduce a new paradigm for early childhood education, one
which stresses cognitive skills and children’s role as future sources of human capital.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
22
References
4
Citations
NaN
KQI