A sizeable literature -- spanning education, sociology and economics -- has investigated the issue of parental school preferences and school choice. A notable gap in the existing evidence base is an exploration of how such preferences differ between mothers and fathers. We present new cross-national findings on this matter, drawing on survey data…

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018 list top 1,000 universities in the world which represent only 5% of the 20,000 higher education institutions of the world. Out of these world countries, Finnish youth were the best young readers in the world according to results from the Programme for International Student Assessment…

Standardised International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) have gained prominence in global and national educational discussions. ILSAs claim to offer valuable insights for improving education systems, but their impact on educational policy varies and has become a contested arena. This article analyses how these assessments fed educational…

This paper examines the problem of modernization of the national education model, based on the program documents "Mangilik El" and "Rukhani Zhangyru," the project "New humanitarian knowledge: 100 new textbooks in the Kazakh language," "Daryn" programs, etc., aimed at the spiritual development of the nation.…

This study examines the Finnish media debate surrounding the OECD-led PISA Study during the periods 2001-2009 and 2013-2014. The empirical focus of the study is on how debaters dissatisfied with Finnish education have justified their criticism in the context of debating PISA and how the justifications used have changed as Finland's PISA ranking…

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) created the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as a political actor in global education through a logic of governance by numbers (Grek, 2009). This article discusses how PISA has became a major showcase for the OECD as an assessment tool par excellence while also…

Special educational needs (SEN) can be seen as a 'construction' that countries define within their legislation and go on to identify, assess, and make provision for in different ways. Definitions vary widely from country to country and even within a country. Many governments have policies to ensure students with SEN are included in mainstream…

PISA, which was launched by OECD, is one of the most significant and successful initiatives on which education systems have recently collectively embarked. However, although it is a well-coordinated international programme, its reception differs according to country. There is therefore a need to analyse specific national circumstances in order to…

Since the recent global paradigm shift in the governance of higher education toward business and marketing, internationally competitive education is increasingly considered as an asset for governments. Consequently, governments started to invest in education branding and marketing their educational systems. In Finland, national interest in…

This study gathers evidence on policies that aim to raise students' learning outcomes through incentives and support measures to enhance teacher quality. A central concern is to identify policies that are effective and efficient. These include incentives and support systems to ensure that high-quality candidates are recruited to initial teacher…

America is not Singapore and Singapore cannot be America. So why are we often comparing ourselves to high-performing countries based on international exams? Despite the educational crisis many U.S. schools are facing, Americans should be cautious not to mimic another country's model within our diverse classrooms. We are largely grounded on the…

Stanford education professor Martin Carnoy examines four main critiques of how international test results are used in policymaking. Of particular interest are critiques of the policy analyses published by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Using average PISA scores as a comparative measure of student achievement is misleading…

This article provides insight into the nature and scope of home-school cooperation in Finland. Situating the study is a brief overview of the Finnish education system and a discussion of the Programme for International Student Assessment reports that place Finnish student outcomes at the top of rankings among industrialized nations for the past…

Economic inequality is high and rising in a number of developed countries, including in the United Kingdom and the United States. There are growing concerns that this may have negative implications for equality of opportunity, and the extent to which social disadvantage is transmitted across generations. It is widely believed that providing…

The "PISA 2006 Science Literacy Assessment" results report Finland as the first ranked country out of the 30 developed nations that participated in the testing (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2007). The United States was ranked 21st. Closer examination of school and student variables may help explain these…