The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development believes that its project to measure student learning outcomes around the world ¨C billed as a university equivalent of its Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests for schools ¨C could have gone ahead if the UK had signed up.

Andreas Schleicher, the OECD¡¯s director for education and skills, confirmed to Times Higher Education that the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes project would not be launched at present.

Mr Schleicher said that ¡°resistance¡± to Ahelo ¡°particularly from elite institutions, is very high¡±.

He continued: ¡°There is an insufficient number of governments, at this point, [who are] willing to take this on.

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¡°The fact that Britain, which was very interested in Ahelo, then also shied back, has had an impact on other countries.¡±

Greg Clark, the Westminster government¡¯s former universities and science minister, chaired a meeting of nations interested in Ahelo in February, where plans to move to a ¡°main study¡± were discussed following the completion of a feasibility study.

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But in July, after the OECD asked member nations to say whether they would support a full project, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that England would not take part.

Mr Schleicher said: ¡°We have four, five countries really keen on this at the moment ¨C it¡¯s not enough to build enough of a momentum. That being said, we were in this situation with Pisa for a long time and then we started it.¡±

He added: ¡°If we had had a country like the UK signing on, I would have gone with the current core ¨C but if it¡¯s just Norway, Finland, China, that is not sufficient at the moment. But we¡¯re going to keep pushing this agenda.

¡°Our next step is going to be to look at other players who have developed comparative assessments,¡± said Mr Schleicher, noting that countries such as the US and Germany have undertaken in-nation projects on learning outcomes.

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Earlier this month, it was announced that the European Union would fund a feasibility study on the pan-European Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education in Europe project, known as Calohee. Mr Schleicher has criticised this project as ¡°each institution setting its own framework¡± rather than being a genuine comparison of outcomes.

john.morgan@tesglobal.com