Introduction
This is a reflective paper where building blocks for high quality education are looked at
from the point of view of Finnish education policy and its implementation. The focus is in
teachers’ daily activities. Finnish education has received attention from policymakers and
researchers since the release of the first Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA) results in 2002. This interest is a consequence of the excellent results achieved by
15-year-old Finnish students. These students achieved scores in reading–, mathematics–,
and scientific-literacy assessments that were among the highest in 2000, 2003, 2006 and
2009 in OECD countries (OECD, 2007; 2010). Not only the high scores but also the low
variation of performance in results is an important outcome of the education policy.
Especially interesting is when the variation in scores is divided to variation of performance
within schools and between, it turned out that the variation between schools has been the
lowest in Finland out of all OECD countries. This means that schools are very similar and
succeed in engaging all kinds of learners in learning.