How Do Finns Know? Educational Monitoring without Inspection and Standard Setting

Abstract

The Finnish educational system was decentralised in the 1980s and the 1990s. The school inspection system was dissolved and the municipalities as organisers of education were given responsibility for monitoring the effectiveness of education and securing that every child has equal possibilities in proceeding through the 9-year basic education consisting of primary education and lower secondary education. A national model for sample-based curricular and thematic assessments was created to ensure equity of education in different parts of the country. Unlike many other countries, Finland decided not to have a comprehensive standardised testing system, and the goals set in the national Core Curriculum were not considered as standards either. Thus, matriculation examination at the end of academic track of upper secondary education remained as the only high-stakes test, but due to extensive possibilities for subject selection and the normative approach still applied in grading the exams, it only produces a limited amount of information that can be used in monitoring the trends of pupil performance. This chapter gives an overview of educational quality monitoring during basic education in Finland, presenting first a short historical review of how the monitoring system has received its current form. Next, the national sample-based assessment system is described before introducing the local ways of monitoring the equity and functionality of basic education. These include the screening of support needs and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the provided support that has been claimed to be one of the explanations behind Finland’s success in international comparisons. Finally, we will discuss whether quality monitoring without standard setting can work and what standard setting could contribute to the Finnish education system.