As one of the key elements of the Nordic welfare model, education systems are based on the idea of providing equal educational opportunities, regardless of gender, social class and geographic origin. Since the 1990s, Nordic welfare states have undergone a gradual but wide-ranging transformation towards a more market-based mode of public service…

Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms have sought to dismantle centralised bureaucracies and replace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasise parental choice and competition between increasingly diversified types of schools. Nevertheless, the "Finnish variety of "post-comprehensivism" continues to emphasise…