Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley state in their recent article (Education Week, December 2007) that ".this era of [standardized] education reform is. coming to an end. We may be entering a new age of post-standardization." In their article Hargreaves and Shirley also analyze the profound differences between the American and the Finnish evaluation cultures and educational theories behind them:

"This new theory [existing already in Finland] pays more attention to developing teachers' capacity to meet higher standards, rather than emphasizing the paper standards themselves"

And they continue

"Assessment for summative quality assurance is replaced by assessment for learning, where data are used to inform ongoing decision to produce better outcomes. In this new theory, the teaching profession is a high-caliber resource for and responsible partner in modernization, not an obstacle to be undermined ."

The authors manage to catch something very crucial about the Finnish evaluation culture and teachers' role in developing the education system. However, to understand why Finland has managed to prevent standardized tests and competition between individual schools from overwhelming the whole educational discourse, we have to go a little bit deeper into the Finnish tradition and idea of education.

In my presentation I will first briefly discuss some premises and special characteristics of our educational system, which affect the design of evaluation. Secondly, I will address the functions and goals of evaluation at different levels. Thirdly, I will describe the organization and coordination of evaluation. Finally, I will discuss the relationship of evaluation to teaching and learning. This presentation concentrates almost solely on evaluation concerning compulsory basic education (Grades 1 to 9).

Education system and its main goals

The Finnish comprehensive school is not only a system. It is also a matter of pedagogical philosophy and practice at the school and classroom level. An intrinsic part of comprehensive school philosophy is the principle of equity, which is a fundamental trait of Finnish education practice. Efforts have accordingly been made to provide all students, population groups and regions of the country with equal opportunities to study and learn. A small country, it has been thought, cannot afford to leave anyone outside high-quality education. This became especially evident during the economic recession years of the 1990s, which greatly strengthened faith in the significance of education and motivation to learn, not least with respect to employment opportunities and economic success (Välijärvi et al. 2002, 39).

The Finnish comprehensive school is for every child and, hence, has to adjust to the needs of each child. Instruction and pedagogy at Finnish schools have accordingly been structured so as to fit heterogeneous student groups. Finnish teachers know, for example, that basically no student can be excluded and sent to another school. In line with this principle, students' own interests and choices are likewise taken into account at schools when planning the curriculum and selecting the contents, textbooks, learning strategies, methods and assessment devices. All this calls for a flexible, school-based, teacher- and student-planned curriculum and evaluation along with student-centred instruction, counselling and remedial teaching (Välijärvi et al. 2002, 40).

In the Finnish culture, the profession of teachers has been seen as one of the most important professions in society, and a lot of resources have consequently been invested in teacher training. Teachers have also been trusted to do their best as true professionals. Accordingly, Finnish teachers have been entrusted with considerable pedagogical independence in the classroom and schools have likewise enjoyed substantial autonomy in organising their work within the flexible limits of the national core curriculum.

Reforms of evaluation

The regulation practice of the education system in Finland has changed rapidly. In the 1970s decision-making was heavily centralised. At that time, evaluation was not much discussed even though many research projects, conducted almost exclusively by the Institute for Educational Research, were essentially evaluation research. Through the legislative reforms in the 1980s and 1990s Finland moved to the era of decentralisation. The number of mandatory rules and regulations has essentially decreased. Consequently, the local administration's decision-making powers were increased. This development has led to a situation where the position and importance of assessment and evaluation has strengthened.

The new framework curricula were enforced in 2004. Compared to the previous ones, they define the goals of teaching at the national level in more detail and represent, to some degree, a return to a centralised system in this respect. They do not, however, essentially restrict schools' and teachers' freedom to determine the content and methods of teaching. By the same token, the curricular reform of 2004 did not bring any major changes to the prevailing evaluation system.

Evaluation in its present form started as early as in the beginning of the 1990s when the new steering system - steering by information - was adopted. At the same time the practice of official school inspections, a tradition dating back to more than a hundred years, was abolished. The new Education Act was issued in 1999, and it also set guidelines for the evaluation of education. According to the new Act, the evaluation of education is compulsory and concerns all areas of education. The evaluation system seeks to ensure that the objectives set in the legislation are achieved and to support the development of education as well as to improve opportunities to learn. Although the emphasis of evaluation is on outcomes, the system does not include any allocation of funds to different educational institutions according to the results they have achieved. Neither does it involve any ranking of individual schools.

National level evaluation

At the national level, monitoring and evaluation focus on the extent to which the objectives set in statutes, education policy decisions and national core curricula are achieved. The task of the authorities is to evaluate the realisation of education policy, such as the implementation of structural reforms, their outcomes and effects. In addition, the authorities are responsible for evaluating the achievement of equality and basic security in education.

The principles and targets of the national evaluation of education are determined by the Ministry of Education. The main guidelines and elements of the implementation of the national evaluation, together with the collection of information, will be negotiated in advance with the local administrations and other maintaining bodies of education. The Ministry should also prepare, in cooperation with other stakeholders, the evaluation programme where the main topics and at least the most important and demanding evaluation projects are specified in advance for a certain period of time.

In Finland, there have never been nation-wide examinations or standardized tests to be arranged during or at the end of the comprehensive school for all students in a given grade. The sampling-based assessments and evaluations of student achievements have nonetheless been diverse, comprehensive and intensive from the very introduction of the comprehensive school.

In the general upper secondary school, however, students take a matriculation examination. The results of the tests in individual subjects included in the examination play an important role when students are selected into many university programmes. For this reason, the matriculation examination has some impact on the pedagogical practices of the comprehensive school, as well. Students in the initial vocational schools do not, however, take this examination. The matriculation examination concluding upper secondary school studies is drawn up nationally, and there is a centralised body to check its individual tests according to uniform criteria.

Because of the lack of standardized test at the end or during the comprehensive school, the question about other ways to monitor the learning outcomes of the compulsory education becomes crucial. Here, two main activities can be recognised:

• International evaluation studies (TIMSS, PIRLS, PISA, SITES)
• National studies which are based on representative samples of schools and students and are repeated on a regular basis in core subjects

When it comes to the practical realisation of evaluation at the national level, we can identify three main agencies:

• Education Evaluation Council
• National Board of Education
• Universities (Jyväskylä and Helsinki in particular)

Education Evaluation Council

According to the relevant Act, the Education Evaluation Council is a leading independent specialist organisation for educational evaluation and development.   The Council's task is to evaluate education and learning, to contribute to the development of evaluation, and to promote evaluation research. Evaluation serves the needs of the Ministry of Education, education providers, and schools. The Council works as an expert network together with the universities and the National Board of Education.

The aim of the new Council that was founded in 2003 has been to reinforce the role of evaluation in developing education, make national-level evaluation of education a more independent activity, and promote cooperation and the flow of information between the parties involved in evaluation and the various stakeholders. The reorganisation of the responsibility for developing and implementing external evaluation of education is intended to underline the fact that external evaluation of education is an independent activity. At the same time, however, there has been a desire to retain adequate links between evaluation on the one hand and educational administration and educational development activities on the other.

The function of the Education Evaluation Council is to assist the Ministry of Education and the education providers in matters concerning evaluation of education and organise external evaluations involving the operations and activities of education providers and educational policy, and arrange the publication of such evaluations. The Council does not conduct studies on outcomes in different subjects.

As regards its composition, the Education Evaluation Council is an organisation of the providers of relevant types of education, the educational establishments, educational administration, the teacher and student organisations, and the parties in working life and the other stakeholder groups. In addition, it includes experts in educational evaluation and evaluation research. There are 14 members in the Council.

The matters dealt with by the Education Evaluation Council are prepared and put into effect by its Secretariat, a separate institution of the University of Jyväskylä led by a secretary general. The Secretariat has a designated chief planning officer for each type of education under its jurisdiction: basic education, general upper secondary school education, vocational education, and adult education. In addition, there is a separate chief planning officer responsible for Swedish-language education. Thus, the Education Evaluation Secretariat, which started its operations on 1 September 2003, is quite a light organisation whose secretarial and clerical functions are handled at the University of Jyväskylä as part of regular staff duties.

National Board of Education, NBE

The evaluations conducted by the National Board of Education primarily concentrate on educational outcomes and mainly aim to serve the national education policy decision-making and the development of curriculum, pedagogy etc.

The evaluation system organized by the NBE consists of three sections:

• evaluation system of learning outcomes;
• production of indicators;
• evaluation projects with varying topics (situational or thematic evaluations)

The indicators are created so as to produce long-term information on educational trends and the operational capacity of the education system. Two types of indicators are being produced. Firstly, there are annual indicators, which are fewer in number and aim to cover the continuous production of the most significant numerical monitoring data on educational outcomes. Secondly, for more detailed reviews on the state of education produced regularly every few years, extensive periodic indicator data is compiled from the various sectors of educational outcomes. Statistics Finland and the Institute for Educational Research are participating in the production of indicators.

The evaluation of educational outcomes concentrates on comparative evaluation at the national level, on evaluation of the state of education in individual fields of education and types of institutions, as well as on thematic evaluation. National comparative evaluation means that the outcomes of the sample-based surveys are compared with national and international benchmarks, accounting for changes that have occurred, or objectives that have been set. Evaluations on the state of education and thematic evaluations refer to diverse evaluation of a certain sector (such as the comprehensive school or special needs education) or an educational subject field (such as instruction in natural sciences).

Informal ethical guidelines for the planning and implementation of national evaluation stress that all evaluations should be based on transparency and co-operation with educational institutions and their maintaining bodies. The organisations to be evaluated and the individuals working within them must be duly informed about the purpose, timing and consequences of the evaluation. Evaluation must give space to local objectives, interpretations and expectations. The underlying principle is that those being evaluated are aware of the evaluation criteria and have the opportunity to present their own views concerning the evaluation and its results. Furthermore, it is also important to ensure student involvement in the evaluation of school education.

The results of the evaluation and the methods and materials applied are public. This is set in the law. Educational evaluation information is produced for use by education authorities, political decision-makers, educational institutions and their maintaining bodies. Naturally, the members of the general public are also interested in how the education system is working and what kinds of outcomes are achieved. However, the results of individual schools are reported only to the school concerned. Other schools, educational authorities or the media have no access to such specific information but have to do with means and averages instead. This is a fundamental principle in the Finnish evaluation culture, and especially schools and teachers stick to it tightly. Teachers' trade union naturally shares and defends this standpoint. This principle also helps ensure mutual trust and co-operation between schools and evaluators as well as high response rates.

Regional and local level evaluation

At the regional level, the evaluation and monitoring of education are carried out by State Provincial Offices. Regional evaluation targets include the serviceability of the network of educational institutions and the satisfaction of the demand for education. The regional level supports the acquisition of information required for national evaluation. In practice, however, the role of State Provincial Offices and regional evaluation is quite limited.

At the local level, the local authorities and the educational institutions that they maintain are responsible for developing the education they provide according to local conditions. Local evaluation primarily stems from the educational objectives of the municipal educational administration, which must be based on national objectives. As a result of the decentralisation of administration, the independence of the educational institutions and their maintaining bodies with regard to the organisation of their activities has increased in recent years. Consequently, educational institutions have become more diverse and the options they provide have multiplied. This has partly increased the need for information through evaluation.

In some largest municipalities - such as Helsinki and Turku - also the educational outcomes have been assessed. In Helsinki, for instance, evaluation has concerned the learning achievements and related trends of entire age groups, and especially students' learning-to-learn skills in different schools. They have also worked in co-operation with the Teacher Training Department of the University of Helsinki. Turku has carried out a broad-based evaluation on the standard of their schools' operation and outcomes paying special attention to the achievement and satisfaction of immigrant students. Jyväskylä has investigated teachers' job satisfaction and their wishes for in-service training as well as their knowledge of ICT environments. Also pre-school arrangements and pupils' afternoon activities have been examined in many municipalities.

However, in small and poor municipalities evaluation has been rather limited and without adequate co-ordination, due to their insufficient resources - both human and financial - for educational evaluation at the municipal level. Although evaluation guidelines have been duly provided by the National Board of Education, they have not always been implemented at the local level.

Self-evaluation of the schools

As the decision-making powers and responsibilities of educational institutions increase, their need for self-evaluation is becoming all the more important. Under the educational legislation educational institutions are obligated to evaluate their own operations and their effects. Also national evaluations will partly draw on the institutions' self-evaluation.

 

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