Pupil selection segments urban comprehensive schooling in Finland: composition of school classes in pupils’ school performance, gender, and ethnicity

ABSTRACT

The Finnish comprehensive school system is regularly referred to as a uniform and “no-tracking”. In this article, we show with novel urban case data in Finland that school performance differed significantly between schools, most strikingly between school classes, and was connected to the school's selectiveness in pupil admission. A comprehensive registry data of 13-year-olds in all schools and school classes of one Finnish city was used. Via the case of urban Finland, it is discussed how school choice policies, and thus pupil selection, has led to hidden ability grouping although applied among totally publicly run basic schooling. Thus the traditional perception of a uniform Finnish comprehensive schooling seems not to be valid in the urban contexts of our study.

KEYWORDS:

• Finnish comprehensive school system
• selectiveness
• school choice policies
• school performance

Notes on contributors

Anna-Kaisa Berisha, M.Sc., M.Ed., is a Doctoral Candidate at the Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning and Education (CELE) and the Department of Education, University of Turku. Her research interests include school choice policies, equality in education and urban spatial segregation. She is currently involved in Justice Through Education (JustEd) – Nordic Centre of Excellence (2013–2018) and in its Team 1 Politics & Governance in Justice through Education.

Piia Seppänen, PhD, is a university researcher at the Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning and Education (CELE), University of Turku, Finland. She worked recently for a year (July 2013–July 2014) as a visiting researcher in the Policy, Cultural and Social Studies in Education Department, University of Waikato, New Zealand. Her research interests are in the field of educational policy and politics, sociology of education and comparative research. She is editing two books of a research project on Parents and School Choice – Family Strategies, Segregation and School Policies in Finnish and Chilean Basic Schooling (PASC). She is currently involved in Justice Through Education (JustEd) – Nordic Centre of Excellence (2013–2018) and in its Team 1 Politics & Governance in Justice through Education.

Notes

¹In addition there are some school classes that are significantly smaller in size and enrol some of the pupils with special needs for education in three schools in the case city; however, those school classes and their pupils are not part of the analyses of this paper.

²In Finland, it is common that after the first six years of comprehensive education (primary school), at the age of 12 children move on to schools that have more pupils (larger units) for the last three years of their studies (comparable to the English lower-secondary school). Hence, depending on the education policies of the municipality or city in question, many pupils change schools or apply to school classes with a special emphasis at this point, although they may have had the opportunity to do so even earlier in their educational path. In the case city, Turku, the pupils have the right to go to the school comprising the last three grades of comprehensive schooling (grades 7 to 9, age of 13–15) within the catchment area in which they live, but they also have the right to apply for a school place in another school.

³In addition, the English speaking international school (n = 17 pupils) is included in the analysis. However we excluded from the school performance comparisons the pupils in school classes and schools that offer education only to pupils who need intensive support for education (special education) (n = 116), one school with only one grade 7 class because they did not provide their pupil evaluations, as well as the only school that offers basic education for Swedish speakers (n = 116) and thus does not use any similar (selection or neigbourhood) pupil enrollment policies to the others.

⁴In the study of Kalalahti et al. (2015), the parents whose views were studied are the parents of the same age cohort that is the focus of the present study.