Nordic countries have historically constructed
the so-called social democratic welfare model with its core values and
political, cultural and economic aims and ideologies. Some comparative
researchers have also claimed that one of the dimensions of this model
has been the Nordic or social democratic educational model, which has
historically united the educational politics of the five countries (see
e.g. Tjeldvoll A: Introduction. In: Tjeldvoll A (ed) Education and the
scandinavian welfare state in the year 2000 – equality, policy, and
reform. Garland Publishing/Taylor & Francis Group, New York/London,
pp xi–xviii, 1998a; Telhaug AO, Mediås OA, Aasen P: Scand J Educ Res
48(2):141–158, 2004), JustEd – Nordic Centre of Excellence: Justice
through Education in The Nordic Countries).

This
situation has certainly changed and the Nordic nations have made
different kinds of educational political decisions especially during the
latest 40 years of globalization and the mainstream of neoliberal
educational politics, but still preserved some parts of their historical
common core.

In this chapter I describe
historically the global turn towards neoliberal educational politics and
compare and research, how the Nordic countries and especially Finland
have reacted and interpreted the global pressures of the supranational
organizations and the reform movements in different dimensions. These
dimensions or themes of global neoliberal educational politics involve
e.g. new governance, New Public Management, steering at a distance,
steering by numbers and privatization of education.