Equity is recognized as one of the distinguishing features of the Nordic education model and the ideology has given rise to a comprehensive education system in Nordic countries. It includes equal opportunities and access to the educational system regardless of social background, gender, ethnicity and geographical location, and the role of educational institutions in the making of civic society has been emphasized. Although existing educational policies in Nordic countries still reflect many similarities to their postwar educational ideologies - for instance, a comprehensive education system and a strong State (Telhaug et al., 2006; Møller, 2009) - there are also some striking differences. Differences include the high performance of the Finnish students on large-scale assessment tests (e.g. PISA), while the performance in other Nordic countries is closer to the OECD average. Transnational influences are received and reconstructed differently. For example, the Nordic countries have developed rather diverse national assessment systems (Moos, 2013), and the relationship between central and local governance varies and is changing. Different public management approaches have been introduced in the education sector, and these are often associated with new systems of accountability, emphasizing efficacy, excellence, competition, and productivity (Møller & Skedsmo, 2013; Uljens et al., 2013). Neo-liberalism in terms of technical-economic rationality has gained terrain and the PISA results legitimate new forms of bureaucracy by demanding continuous documentation and monitoring of work. Certain discursive and managerial elements seem to occur with more frequency in one national context than another. Leadership is distributed in new ways within nation-states as well as on transnational levels, and new forms of interactions between different levels, and within different levels, of educational governance are established.

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