Traditionally focusing social justice, inclusion and equality (Arnesen & Lundahl 2006), Nordic edu-cation policies have in¬creasingly been replaced by or mixed with neoliberal policies of privatization and choice, but comparative analyses of this development are sparse (c.f. Blossing et al 2014; Lundahl 2016). As one way of facilitating such comparisons, we wanted to scrutinize available large-scale data¬bases. Good statistical data may help discovering important pat¬terns of similarities as well as discrepancies between count¬ries and over time, and help con¬textualizing and strengthening quali¬tative ana¬lyses of Nordic education. Statistics however reflect dominant social categories, high-lighting certain aspects and neg¬lecting or hiding others (Lindblad et al 2015). They have commonly been created for political and adminis¬trative rather than research purposes, e.g. for education governance by assessment of educational perform¬ance (c.f. Des¬rosières 1998; Carlhed 2016; Gustafsson 2008). Simultaneously, data¬bases building on interna¬tional large-scale assessments pose several advant¬ages to researchers; these data are carefully generated and validated, with sophis¬ticated sampling designs, and may get increased explanatory power by add¬¬ing longitudinal and qualitative data at national level (Gustafsson 2008). This paper analyses international and national statistical databases and datasets with regard to their potential to enable Nordic com¬parisons of social justice and privatisation of edu¬cation. We ask: What available statistical data allow comparative analyses of scope and character of different aspects of (a) social justice, and (b) privatisation/marketization of education? What important silences are identified in these respects? Initially, aspects/definitions of justice – privatization/¬mar-ketization were analysed. There¬after potential national and international data sets were selected, analysed and evaluated with regard to their relevance, comparability across countries and over time, and accessibility. National educational statistics from Iceland, Norway and Sweden were ex-plored with respect to the extent they are com¬patible, stable and suitable for comparisons. In addition, interviews with officials at the national agencies of educa¬tion/ministries of education were conduct¬ed. Nordic national statistics contain a host of data reflecting different aspects of justice of education, but better coordination is needed to facilitate comparisons. Further, the increasingly important aspect of privatization of education is reflected very sparsely in Nordic sta¬tistics. The EU and OECD databases offer the most possibilities of comparisons between the Nordic countries but display problematic measures and white spots. Only OECD´s PISA has a measure of competition between schools, allowing for certain, but limited comparisons. It is finally recommend that measures should be taken to strengthen Nordic statistical data on education.

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