THE WHYS AND HOWS OF FINNISH SUCCESS AT PISA

Numerous countries evaluate effectiveness of their educational reforms and investments and receive feedback for their educational systems based on the results of international assessment projects. Finland and Turkey as OECD members are also among those countries. Finlandʹs continuous success at PISA 2000, 2003 and 2006 has aroused so much curiosity, leading many countries particulary the ones that have failed at PISA like Turkey to investigate reasons behind its success. As a result, in this study, several reasons appearing to account for Finlandʹs PISA success, such as flexible, autonomous and individualized approach in education, equity in education; teacher efficacy and literate society are discussed in the context of Finnish education system. In addition, several conclusions for Turkey retrieved from the case of Finland are higlighted in order to contribute to the development of necessary educational policies to actualize the ideal of catching and maintaining quality in Turkish education system.