PISA for development and its impact on education policy and development in Cambodia
In recent years, the right to education has emerged as a cornerstone of UNESCO’s Education Agenda 2030 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, SDG4 serves as a blueprint for developing countries to achieve a more equitable and sustainable future. In 2016, UNESCO established a steering committee, comprising UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), to facilitate the global implementation of SDG4. To monitor the progress of developing countries in achieving SDG4, the OECD persuaded UNESCO to leverage one of its International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) – PISA for Development (PISA-D). Building on the established Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), PISA-D operates through two distinct forms of power that operate through Cambodia as a state administration and through Cambodia as a population. The first is referred to in this thesis as ‘governance’ and refers to the ways in which the state administration, officials and executives are steered to introducing education reforms and policies. The other is referred to as ‘disciplinary power’, which operates through examination and treatment, imposing particular forms of accountability onto the school system including school principals, teachers and students. These two forms of power may enable the OECD to place Cambodia under its policy directives through the PISA-D programme. I understand that the articulation of these two forms of power tends to be a form or iteration of coloniality. The overarching objective of this thesis is to analyse how and why Cambodia chose to become involved in PISA-D and what have been the local impacts. I employed some elements of a document analysis on academic and media sources to deepen my understanding of the OECD's educational initiatives through PISA and PISA-D. This analysis began with a review of PISA's application in member countries, providing essential context for studying the PISA-D program itself. The thesis further explores the tensions arising during the enactment of PISA-D in Cambodia, offering a nuanced perspective on the coloniality associated with PISA(-D). This exploration was enriched through semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders to understand how these tensions manifest in practice. The thesis argues that Cambodia's decision to join the PISA-D programme was naive and pressured. Enacted through the Ministry's EQAD with support from the World Bank – the OECD’s strategic partner, the PISA-D programme produced results, which were meant for the World Bank to justify the urgent implementation of SBM as the only way to enhance accountability in Cambodian schools. Influenced by these two said IOs, Cambodian leaders were led to believe that assessing students internationally was essential for local education reform and would yield valuable evidence for policy making, which has increasingly focused on generating human capital solely for national economic growth – identified as neoliberalisation of Cambodian education. Overall, there is much evidence that the OECD has used the PISA-D programme to subject Cambodia to the negative effects of globalisation, the power of PISA and ultimately the OECD’s policy directives.
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