Abstract
Evaluation and assessment of education outcomes and processes is one of hottest issues in education policy today. Finland has a unique system of evaluation as the education policy rests very much on the quality of teachers. It is often heard that the system is based on trust and cooperation; teachers have a lot of pedagogical freedom, and schools have a strong inside and outside network of support. Therefore, this chapter analyzes the assessments and evaluations undertaken at the national, municipal, and collaborative levels. As clearly said by Linnakylä et al. (Finnish basic education: When equity and excellence meet, 2010), the main idea is to develop and support schools, not control them. In this topic, Finland departs very strongly from policies undertaken by other developed economies, most noticeably the USA and England. A quick review is done of the inspectorate system that the Finnish vanished in the 1990s and the matriculation or leaving exams for high school students, as the only national assessment undertaken by the Finnish authorities.
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Notes
- 1.
A brief explanation of education evaluation policy in Finland can be found in various sections of the website of the Center for Education Evaluation at the University of Helsinki: http://www.helsinki.fi/cea/eng/index.html (May 31, 2012).
- 2.
http://www.iea.nl/ (May 31, 2012).
- 3.
http://www.iea.nl/timss2011.html (June 1, 2012).
- 4.
http://www.iea.nl/pirls2011.html (June 1, 2012).
- 5.
http://timssandpirls.bc.edu (December 29, 2012).
- 6.
http://www.kunnat.net/k_perussivu.asp?path=1;161;279;280;105989;37567 (January 19, 2009).
- 7.
http://www.localfinland.fi/en/Pages/default.aspx (September 13, 2012).
- 8.
In addition to the basic education curricula referred to in the following paragraph, a new curriculum for general high school education was initiated in 2003. There is another curriculum for vocational school, and universities are in charge of the curricula for university education, which includes teacher education.
- 9.
The acronym in English is FEEC. See: http://www.edev.fi/portal/english5 (September 13, 2012).
- 10.
The responsibilities of the Finnish National Board of Education in the area of evaluation are described at: http://www.oph.fi/english/pageLast.asp?path=447,2783,2789 (May 25, 2008 and June 4, 2012).
- 11.
In administrative terms there are six provinces—Lapland, Oulu, Western Finland, Eastern Finland, Southern Finland, and Åland—with governors designated by the country’s president, except in the case of Åland. The provincial governments are in charge of certain matters in the seven Ministries, including education. For example, they intervene in the area of education through the evaluation of municipalities’ educational services and they are responsible for administering public libraries (http://www.laaninhallitus.fi/lh/home.nsf/pages/indexeng, May 25, 2008). Also, see Statistics Finland (2008, p. 52).
- 12.
This is a Council existing since before the FEEC and inspires part of the latter’s work: http://www.kka.fi/english/.
- 13.
There were 416 municipalities at the time of the author’s interview with the FEEC director in March 2008. This number decreased to 348 in 2009 and to 336 in 2012.
- 14.
For example, a municipality may decide to implement standardized municipal census tests.
- 15.
A brief description of the FEEC and its role in coordinating academic research on Finland’s education evaluation can be found in: Lyytinen and Hämäläinen (2003).
- 16.
http://www.finheec.fi/index.phtml?l=en&s=1 (June 4, 2012).
- 17.
Specifically, the secretary general; five persons, each responsible for one of the following five areas of education: basic, Swedish language, high school, vocational and adult; a local education coordinator; and a departmental secretary.
- 18.
An epic name. In the epic novel Kalevala, Aino is a sister to Joukahainen or Jouku, one of the main heroes in the novel.
- 19.
For an official description of the scale of results from the matriculation examination, I would suggest consulting: http://www.ylioppilastutkinto.fi/en/index.html (June 4, 2012).
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Andere M., E. (2014). Does Finland Evaluate School Education?. In: Teachers' Perspectives on Finnish School Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02824-8_4
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