Families, School Choice, and Democratic Iterations on the Right to Education and Freedom of Education in Finnish Municipalities

Abstract

This article analyzes the ways in which the right to education and freedom of education are expressed in local school choice policies in Finland. We aim to discover the elements that form democratic iterations on the right to education and freedom of education by contrasting their manifestations in three local institutional spaces for parental school choice. We focus on different levels of structures and agents including national legislation, local spaces for school choice, municipal demographics, and the impact of socioeconomic status and institutional space for school choice on parental attitudes.

• school choice policy
• democratic iterations
• right to education
• freedom of education

Notes

1. 1. Drawing on Benhabib (2004), we understand democratic iterations to be processes of public deliberation through which universalist right claims are contested and contextualized within political institutions and in the public sphere.

2. 2. Drawing on Taylor (2002), we understand a local institutional space for parental school choice to be a bureaucratically defined area in which education has traditionally been administered, that is, the municipality in the Finnish context (see Kalalahti & Varjo, 2012; Varjo & Kalalahti, 2011).

3. 3. We would like to stress that the municipalities of Espoo, Turku, and Vantaa are described here as examples of three distinctive spaces for parental school choice. A detailed analysis of actual local policies and practices concerning admission and selection is beyond the scope of this article.

4. 4. Parents and School Choice–Family Strategies, Segregation and Local School Policies in Chilean and Finnish Basic Schooling, funded by the Academy of Finland and Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile.

5. 5. The questionnaires were distributed by mail and parents had the possibility of answering on paper or via an e-form. The number of recipients was 12,032, the answer rate was 22%.

6. 6. Our focus on mothers draws on previous studies that have highlighted the importance of the role of the mothers in school choice processes (Seppänen, 2006; Reay, 1998). Also, most of the respondents were mothers (81%) or guardians responding together (5%).

7. 7. Finnish private schools are mostly schools with a specific religious or pedagogical emphasis.

8. 8. Traditionally, the municipality was divided into separate school districts and children were allocated to the school in their own district.

9. 9. Mean difference was statistically significant (analysis of variance: the right to education F_2,1686 = 13.13; p ≤ 0.00) and freedom of education F_2,1684 = 9.08; p ≤ 0.00).

10. 10. Based on the results of the 2008 municipal elections.

11. 11. Survey [population, 30–50 years]: Tertiary level education Espoo 85% [59%], Turku 70% [45%], Vantaa 69% [41%], Income (parent, median) [population (mean)]: Espoo < $53,980 [˜$49,932], Turku < $53,980 [˜$35,087], Vantaa < $60,728 [˜$40,485].

12. 12. The National Coalition Party, the Greens of Finland, and the Social Democratic Party of Finland are the three biggest political parties in major Finnish cities.

13. 13. Finland is a bilingual nation. The vast majority of Finnish inhabitants (90%) are Finnish-speakers and the largest minority (5.4%) are Swedish speakers. There is a parallel educational system with similar governmental and municipal organizations in both languages. Our analysis only focuses on Finnish speakers.