Too Eager to Comply? OECD Education Policies and the Finnish Response

Abstract

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has strongly influenced European education policy and the entire global neo-liberally toned discourse that nowadays prevails in the implementation of national education policy and educational reforms. The educational policy governance of the OECD is based on overall and supranational information management — the instruments of which in practice are published analyses, statistics and indicator publications, as well as country and thematic reviews. This article presents, first, four phases in the history of the OECD educational policy based strictly on an analysis of documentary material. These phases provide a context for the analyses of the connections of the OECD and Finnish education policies in which the country and thematic reviews of Finland are used as empirical material. Finland has, especially in recent years, attained a status of a model pupil in implementing the educational policy recommendations of the OECD. Thus, several connections between the OECD recommendations and the development of education policy in Finland can be found in the material. In this study Finland has a role of an example of the field of activity of supranational actors and the connections and influences between the OECD and Finland should not be considered unique. Similar rapprochement of politics and thinning out of the independent authority of nation-states can even be seen on a larger scale.