Keywords: PISA; higher education; cultural superiority; exceptionalism The success of Finland in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings presents it as an ideal model for education based on teacher autonomy and student centred learning. This paper presents a framework for recognizing and interrogating how scripts of cultural superiority and exceptionality are concealed within the narrative of the ‘Finnish Miracle’ of education. I examine the phenomena of the ‘Finnish Miracle’ in relation to theoretical work and literature on racism within Europe and notions of Finnish exceptionalism (Balibar, 1991; Goldberg, 2006; 2008; Rastas, 2012). Based on a synthesis of the reading, I present a framework for examining notions of cultural superiority constructed within it. The framework identifies three counter scripts, denial of racism (racism without race), complicity in racism and benevolent equity. The framework will serve as an analytical tool for future empirical research, examining policy texts and undergraduate students’ perspectives of difference and diversity in Finnish Higher Education The framework aims to identify and articulate counter narratives as critiques that expose and challenge, the assumptions of cultural neutrality within it. The expectation of student homogeneity and the tailoring of education towards such expectation, coupled with the strong reliance on (narrow and subject specific) PISA scores as a measurement of Finnish educational success (Simola, 2005), fail to address the underlying exclusion, within the educational system of those “who are not included in the national (Nordic or European) ‘us’” (Rastas, 2012, p. 89). Thus, the purpose of this paper is to interrogate the idea that the Finnish educational system is an ideal to be modelled internationally.

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