Finnish education policy and its implementation could be compared to the global
education movements (Sahlberg, 2004). Several opposite trends can be recognised. During
the last two decades, there have been three common features in education policies and
reforms globally that have aimed to improve the quality of education, especially to raise
student achievement (Hargreaves, Earl, Shawn & Manning, 2001) but which have not yet
become a part of Finnish educational policy.