How Municipalities Govern Local Education Markets in Finland

• In Event: 16.013 - Citizenship, Markets, and Equal Opportunity: Local/Global Perspectives

Abstract

Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms have globally sought to dismantle centralized bureaucracies and replace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasize parental choice and competition between diversified types of schools. Despite the general trend, Finland continues to emphasize municipal assignment of school places, in the form of the neighborhood school principle; albeit, in its current form, with the possibility for locally controlled choice and competition, channeled especially through classes with a special emphasis.
Based on nine in-depth thematic interviews with key executive experts in provision and management of local level compulsory education, we investigate what kind modalities local education authorities produce when they talk about the effects of school choice and their objectives to estimate and govern them.

Authors

• Janne Varjo, University of Helsinki

• Mira Kalalahti, University of Helsinki