One of the basic principles of Finnish education is that all people must have equal access to high-quality education and training. The same opportunities to education should be available to all citizens irrespective of their ethnic origin, age, wealth or where they live. 

Responsibility for educational funding is divided between the State and the local authorities. Pre-primary and compulsory education is provided by each district as one of their basic services that receive statutory government funding. This funding is not tagged and the district can decide for itself how it allocates this funding.  

AUTONOMY AT DISTRICT BASED LEVEL

Schools/colleges etc are responsible for their day to day teaching arrangements as well as for the effectiveness and quality of their education.  There are, for example, no regulations governing class sizes and the schools are free to determine how to group students.  

Each local authority determines how much autonomy is passed on to schools. The schools have the right to provide educational services according to their own administrative arrangements and visions, as long as the basic functions, determined by law, are carried out. 

In many cases, for example, budget management, resourcing and staff recruitment is the responsibility of the schools.  I did notice that the allocation of funding for buildings did vary greatly as I moved between districts. 

QUALITY ASSURANCE

In Finland school inspections were abolished in the early 1990s. The belief is that change can be affected in and on the system by providing information, support and funding.- how refreshing!

 Objectives and goals laid down in legislation, as well as the national core curricula and national qualification requirements provide schools with guidance and broad aims. After this, the school has autonomy to develop its localised curriculum.  The system relies on the proficiency of teachers and other personnel.

While there is no formal system of school inspections, there  is strong focus on both self-evaluation of schools and other education providers, and national evaluations of learning outcomes. National evaluations of learning outcomes are done annually through  tests  either in mother tongue and literature or mathematics. Other subjects are evaluated according to the evaluation plan of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

The main aim of these national evaluations of learning outcomes is to follow, at national level, how well the objectives have been reached as set in the core curricula and qualification requirements.However,  the results are not used for ranking the schools. The teachers and Principals I spoke with liked the evaluations/tests. Teachers marked them internally and they used the results as a form of moderation to see if their  school's expectations and levels of achievement were in line with the nation's schools. In many ways it reminded me of how we may use e -asTTle or PATs and other normed assessments to get a similar understanding of how we are going and  to triangulate our own in-school data.