Making a Consensus : Review of the International Standard Classification of Education
International statistics of education are increasingly mobilized politically and scientifically. The European Union has placed them at the heart of the Lisbon Strategy by establishing “progress indicators” and involving social scientists in the identification of “best practices”. In this context, standardization of measurement categories in the world undergoes a new transformation. Since 2007, Eurostat, OECD and the Institute of Statistics of UNESCO embarked on a draft revision of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). The analysis of this process, viewed in historical perspective, highlights the challenges of definition for the various institutions involved and the central role of experts, who develop a common language to universally describe the forms of learning. The developed concepts and categories affect the resulting conception of education.