Beyond PISA: Building a World-Class Learning System in Finland

Najat Ouakrim-Soivio; Sirkku Kupiainen

Beyond PISA: Building a World-Class Learning System in Finland

Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report

Original language	English

Publisher	National Center on Education and the Economy
Number of pages	174
ISBN (Electronic)	979-8-9885450-1-9
Publication status	Published - 17 Jan 2024
MoE publication type	D4 Published development or research report or study

Fields of Science

516 Educational sciences

Other files and links

Our goal with this report is to tell the story of Finnish education in a way that allows the reader to weigh the wider socio-historical factors against the more specific education system-related factors commonly understood to explain Finland’s rise and partial fall from its status as ‘best-ever’ education system. While we do not mean to diminish the relatively high and equal outcomes of the Finnish education system, we believe there are limits to the narrower education system-centered explanations for Finland’s success offered in the years after the first OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results—known as the Finnish “PISA miracle.” We do not want to imply that all earlier explanations of Finnish success have lacked a socio-historical perspective or that the authors of those explanations deliberately led the public astray; many of the excesses and outright misinterpretations in public discourse on this subject may be due instead to the over-simplification of complex ideas that so often accompanies their widespread dissemination. This report is the result of an assignment from the Washington, DC-based National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) and the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), aiming to investigate the education systems of a group of countries or jurisdictions that have fared well in international comparative assessments. Our aim has been to offer a general view on issues that we as researchers of education deem critical for understanding the current state of Finnish education, including the international attention it gained after Finnish students’ success in the early PISA studies, its particular strengths, and its current and future challenges. We know well that the “Finnish story” can be written in as many ways as there are authors, and like all authors before us, we have been forced to leave out numerous discussions we would have liked to include, either as part of the existing chapters or as additional chapters. On the other hand, we admit that no history of a country’s educational system or explanation for its good or poor outcomes can ever be comprehensive. Accordingly, we will be satisfied if this report enriches the reader’s understanding of the Finnish education system and prompts further discussions of its strengths and weaknesses and possible remedies for at least some of its most critical challenges. Maybe most critical among these challenges, and a topic we will return to many times in this report, is Finland’s lack of clear learning standards and reliable data on learning outcomes. We are well aware that many previous interpretations of Finland’s international success have presented the lack of clear standards, and especially of standardized testing, as assets. Yet with Finland’s recent decline in learning outcomes, the lack ofthe lack of Building a World-Class Learning System in Finland ii reliable data has made it much harder to correct course. Andreas Schleicher summed up the problem neatly: “Without data, you are just another person with an opinion” (Hautamäki et al. 2008). In its first official effort to address the issue of learning standards, Finland implemented new assessment criteria starting in 2022; only a careful follow-up will show whether the criteria have succeeded in providing comparable expectations for students’ learning and for grading across schools. As we will discuss, this endeavor is complicated by a strong Finnish reservation about marking the end of comprehensive school—the treasured foundation of the education system—with an exit exam.

What Does an Outstanding Learning System Look Like? A comparative study of learning systems in selected top-performing jurisdictions
Ouakrim-Soivio, N. (Project manager) & Kupiainen, S. (Principal Investigator)
01/11/2019 → 31/12/2020
Project: Research project

Education in Estonia and Finland|
Ouakrim-Soivio, N. (Speaker)
7 Nov 2024
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk

Cite this

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Beyond PISA: Building a World-Class Learning System in Finland

Fields of Science

Other files and links

Projects

What Does an Outstanding Learning System Look Like? A comparative study of learning systems in selected top-performing jurisdictions

Activities

Education in Estonia and Finland|

Cite this