Patterns of ‘public‐school markets’ in the Finnish comprehensive school from a comparative perspective

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Abstract
The article examines school choice in the context of the Finnish, publicly owned and governed comprehensive school system, the ‘named public‐school markets’, and compares findings to similar studies done in other countries. Parental choice is used in addition to traditional catchment areas and has now settled in the educational policy of big cities since its introduction in Finland in the mid 1990s. The focus of this article is on the extent and direction of pupils' preferences between the schools in relation to the characteristics of the schools in order to understand what kind of patterns have been formed along with the school choice. At the turn of the year 2000, half of the age group transferring to the 7th grade applied for a place in an other than catchment area school in the capital city, and on average one‐third of those in the other four big cities. The local public school markets touched every school in the urban areas. The schools were divided into popular, rejected, and balanced schools on the basis of net gains in request flows. A detailed analysis of the preferences between schools is presented in a map. Patterns of operation of the local school markets in the four case cities showed astoundingly similar features to those reported in studies conducted in other countries.

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