Browsing by Author "Tonteri, Erik"

Since 1990’s, some new guidelines of Finnish schooling-politics have spread in Finland, and now they direct Finnish comprehensive school towards more unequal patterns. Among elite-class and middle-class there seems to be a policy, that parents decide the school, where their children go to. This policy has become sort of a trend, and its popularity is increasing. The exploitation of the parental decision for their children’s school is leading to a situation, where schools and residential areas diverges in appreciated areas and unappreciated areas. In that case, children’s backgrounds will effect on their opportunities to success at school with their best abilities. The aim of this thesis is to examine the schools part and significance in producing the differences formed by children’s backgrounds. This thesis is a literary overview of the importance of a student’s social-economic background in his/her success at school. This literary overview will clarify the concept ‘social-economic background’ and introduce some theories related to it. The literary overview is focused at the changes in Finnish comprehensive school in the 21st century, especially for the part of PISA-results. This thesis will also survey the situation of parental decision for their children’s school in Finland. The thesis points out that in Finland, student’s social-economic backgrounds effects, almost the least among OECD-countries, on the differences in school-success. Still these differences are significant for the equality of opportunity of Finnish students. In addition, the differences have increased a little bit in the 21st century. Especially, in parts of Finland’s biggest cities there are four cities, where the parental decision of their children’s school has increased so much, that it has become an issue. Student’s social-economic background effects on his/her opportunities to success at school. Although, the differences in Finland are minor among OECD-countries, in practice we are talking about thousands of children. The slow progression of parental decision of their children’s school have possibly affected on the increase of the differences in school-success, that is produced by the student’s social-economic background. Still, in future we need more research to see the actual results of these new guidelines of Finnish schooling-politics.