Anu Partanen spotlights the curious example of Finland, where there are no private schools:
Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality. … Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance. In fact, since academic excellence wasn't a particular priority on the Finnish to-do list, when Finland's students scored so high on the first PISA survey in 2001, many Finns thought the results must be a mistake. But subsequent PISA tests confirmed that Finland — unlike, say, very similar countries such as Norway — was producing academic excellence through its particular policy focus on equity.
But for all the talk of equity and non-competitiveness in Partanen's piece, this key sentence is skipped over rather quickly: "A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country."
The Dish 