Quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) in Finnish compulsory schooling: a national model or just unintended effects of radical decentralisation?

Abstract

This article traces quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) developments in Finnish compulsory schooling. The central question is this: Is there a Finnish model of QAE? We conclude that it may be a rhetorical overstatement to speak about a specific Finnish ‘Model’ of QAE in a strong sense. However, neither is it valid to conclude that what happens in Finnish QAE merely reflects the unintended effects of radical decentralisation. The Finnish consensus on certain issues in QAE could be characterised as silent, and based on antipathy rather than on conscious and articulated principles. Finnish hostility towards ranking, combined with a bureaucratic tradition and a developmental approach to QAE strengthened by radical municipal autonomy, has constructed two national and local embedded policies that have been rather effective in resisting a trans‐national policy of testing and ranking. It is significant, however, that both represent a combination of conscious, unintended and contingent factors.

Keywords:

• education policy transfer
• travelling and embedded policies
• contingency

Notes

1. We are indebted to Pasi Sahlberg (2007, 263) for his witty expression about the new education reform orthodoxy ‘that outlines the logic and evolution of education development as most countries adjust their education systems to respond to fit new economic realities and social challenges’.

2. OAJ members are engaged in early‐childhood education, basic education, upper‐secondary‐school teaching, vocational training, polytechnic‐level teaching, basic art education, vocational adult education as well as university teaching. Over 95% of Finnish teachers are members of an organised trade union.

3. As a symptom of the symbolic power of equality in Finnish educational discourse, there is no analogous concept for equity, even though it would be easy to find one (oikeus, oikeudenmukaisuus). The concept of equality is used in two contrasting ways. These two conceptions were connected in a curious both and formulation in a major document – and formulation in a major document published by the Educational Evaluation Council (FEEC 2004, 15): ‘The economic and social welfare of Finnish society is based on an egalitarian public system of schooling. Its mission is to guarantee for every citizen both educational opportunities of good quality regardless of his/her sex, dwelling place, age, mother tongue and economic position and the right to tuition accordant with his/her capabilities and special needs and his/her self‐development’ (emphasis added).