ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the role in education of the more important inter-governmental organizations: the Council of Europe (CDCC); the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco); and the World Bank. Inter-governmental organizations are a twentieth-century phenomenon. They were few and largely ineffectual before the Second World War and, in any case, only marginally concerned with education. As to differences, Unesco and the Bank nominally serve the whole world, whereas the CDCC and OECD serve a specific group of countries. The formal degree of commitment to educational issues and problems varies from Unesco, for which it is absolute, through the CDCC to the Bank and OECD, for which it is a priority only in so far as it relates to economic as well as social development. Many other organizations are concerned with the development of education by means of international discourse, exchanges, and field programmes.
