TY - JOUR N2 - Framed by the mantra of ?Building back Better? (BBB) the Covid-19 Pandemic has inspired myriad proposals to transform education systems for the future. We interrogate the phrase ?building back better?, focusing on its origins and application within crisis narratives. We analyse responses to the pandemic published by influential global agencies focusing on their agendas and visions for the future of education. We identify the common and divergent elements in their narratives, illustrating how the crisis was used to promote each organisation?s specific interests, and how these narratives were sustained through strategic silences and the selective use of evidence. Whilst the pandemic was used to promote the different longstanding agendas of those agencies, we argue that overall it was used to constrain the future as a privatised techno-utopia, rather than build towards a new vision. VL - 52 N1 - This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. ID - discovery10149375 AV - public JF - Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education EP - 711 UR - https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2022.2066886 SP - 691 KW - Social Sciences KW - Education & Educational Research KW - Build Back Better KW - Covid KW - Education Futures KW - Global Agencies KW - POLICY TI - Covid and the future of education: global agencies 'building back better' IS - 5 A1 - Morris, Paul A1 - Park, Choah A1 - Auld, Euan PB - ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD Y1 - 2022/05/12/ ER -