International Organisations' Story of COVID and Vision of Digital Transformation of Education

This paper seeks to identify the international organisations’ (IOs) vision of the future of education, distinguishing their policy framing and narrative. This inquiry links to the interpretive comparative analysis of ideas and politics underlying the IOs’ seemingly convergent digital transformation reform movement. The findings of this paper indicate that IOs’ visions for digital sovereignty and digital expansionism have revolved around their historical struggles between redistributive and liberal development in the evolved context of digitalisation. While UNESCO promotes a digital commons approach that emphasises the role of governments in establishing and overseeing digital infrastructures, the OECD and the World Bank have proposed neoliberal policies, including free trade agreements, the liberalisation of digital markets, and private investment to develop digital public infrastructures. In education, UNESCO has emphasized the significance of face-to-face schooling and teachers in the future education systems and practices. In contrast, the OECD and the World Bank have promoted radical public education reform proposals to introduce changes and innovations, highlighting the roles of adaptive, personalized digital technologies, cost-effective blended learning, and public-private partnerships as equally important as those of schools and teachers. Notably, both the OECD and the World Bank have proposed a digital single market adopting the concepts of free flow of people, goods, services, capital, and data to the digital realm while reducing the barriers across borders, further advocating for the development of digital education infrastructures for inclusive, resilient, scalable digital education systems. Illustrating the gaps between their humanistic, consultancy story and neoliberal policy proposals, this paper argues that the OECD and the World Bank seem to be embarking on another historical structural adjustment movement towards neoliberal digital reforms for public administration and education, encouraging the free flow of data capital and interoperability now required to advance digital and ed-tech industries.