The art of governing local education markets – municipalities and school choice in Finland

ABSTRACT

Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms in Europe and beyond have sought to dismantle centralised bureaucracies and replace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasise parental choice and competition between diversified types of schools. Despite this general trend, Finland continues to emphasise the municipal assignment of school places, albeit with the possibility of locally controlled choice. The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the ways in which Finnish local education authorities – involving both officials and politicians – define themselves in relation to the changing conceptions of the Nordic welfare state model. The paper discusses the social costs and benefits of school choice in addition to the kinds of techniques these authorities use when aiming to control and manage the social costs and benefits of school choice. Based on nine in-depth thematic interviews with local education authorities, the modalities – having to, being-able, wanting and knowing how – will be analysed.

KEYWORDS:

• School choice
• local education policies
• universalism
• selectivism
• modalities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Finnish private schools are mostly schools with a specific religious or pedagogical emphasis. According to the OECD definition, they are government-dependent private schools, that is, institutions that receive more than 50% of their funding from government agencies (Musset, 2012, p. 9). In 2009, 96% of Finnish comprehensive schools were owned and administered by municipalities (Kumpulainen, 2011, p. 45).

2. The decision to involve only large, urban municipalities was based on the institutional preconditions for the formation of local school markets, and spatial demographical features of Finland. First, in Finland and elsewhere, school choice is distinctively an urban phenomenon. The overall idea of supply in the local education markets is built on the precondition that there are several schools within a relatively short distance from each other to choose from. Second, Finland is a sparsely populated country, consisting of relatively few major urban population centres. In toto, the municipalities in our study represent Finnish local contexts where school choice is possible, and its consequences have become a societal issue. To ensure anonymity, we have not published the names of the municipalities, nor described their features in a detailed fashion.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Helsinki Metropolitan Region Urban Research Program.

Notes on contributors

Janne Varjo

Janne Varjo, PhD, is university lecturer in the Research Unit focusing on the Sociology and Politics of Education at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Varjo lectures on Sociology of Education, History of Education and Administration, Economy and Planning of Education. Currently, he contributes to two Academy of Finland funded four-year projects: Transitions and Educational Trajectories of Immigrant Youth, and Dynamics in Basic Education Politics in Nordic Countries (DYNO).

Mira Kalalahti

Mira Kalalahti, PhD (Soc.sc.), is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Research Unit focusing on the Sociology and Politics of Education at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests involve especially the equality of educational opportunities and educational transitions. She is currently working as a researcher at the project Transitions and Educational Trajectories of Immigrant Youth. https://tuhat.helsinki.fi/portal/en/person/kalalaht