How Finnish, not East Asian Education Became a Global Reference

Abstract

Finnish education has become the global symbol of educational excellence since its success in the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) implemented triennially since 2000. Every year, a few thousand international visitors, including many from East Asian nations, flock to the small Nordic nation to discover "how Finland gets it right." Overshadowed by the global attention to Finnish education is the consistently high performance of East Asian nations. Since 2000, South Korea has been performing just as well as Finland with the former educational "poster child" Japan following behind. In recent years, more East Asian nations and cities such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Shanghai have begun to participate and dominate the PISA league tables, though the appropriateness of comparing cities (e.g. Hong Kong and Shanghai) with countries needs to be questioned. One has to wonder, then, why PISA has generated so much global enthusiasm for Finnish education but not for East Asian education?