Upper secondary exit exams are common in education systems worldwide, marking the passing of upper secondary education and acting as gatekeeper for higher education (Noah & Eckstein, 1992). This double role of the exam is especially salient in countries where the share of the age-cohort passing academic upper secondary education exceeds that of students accepted to higher education. If the exam plays a prominent role in admission, the high stakes of the exam are especially acute. This sets specific requirements to the comparability of the examination results across the exams of the different subjects if the examination is so constructed, and across years if delayed entering to higher education is common (cf. Beguin, 2000). Both clauses are relevant in Finland, the focus of the present study.

While an upper secondary exit exam is an integral part of the education systems of most European countries, both stratified and comprehensive, the form of the exam and the share of students sitting for it vary widely. Despite these differences, the academic track of upper secondary education usually comprises some form of an exit examination or final grades taken into account in tertiary student selection as a sole factor or in addition to an entrance examination, unless access is open to all or the selection happens later based on students’ study performance. In Finland, both academic and vocational upper secondary education provide a qualification for higher education (Orr et al., 2017), meaning that even if a 2018 reform decreed half of students to be accepted into higher education based solely on their matriculation examination results, Finland cannot fully abandon the entrance examinations, which earlier regarded all applicants.

Orr and colleagues (2017) classify the European Union member states according to upper secondary tracking and higher education institutions’ autonomy on student intake. In Finland, the state decides in collaboration with universities the number of students admitted to different programs and the outlines for admission policy, while universities decide the details for the latter. In 2018, a student admission reform in Finland mandated half of students to be accepted on matriculation examination results with universities deciding in collaboration how credit for the different subject-specific exams would be awarded. The main goal of the reform was to speed Finnish students’ slow transit from secondary to tertiary education, a problem that also the OECD has pointed out as one of the weak points of the Finnish education system. Due to a backlog of older matriculates vying for a place, two thirds of new matriculates are left yearly without a place in higher education. The reform was backed by research on the drawbacks of the earlier entrance examination-based student selection (Sarvimäki & Pekkarinen, 2016) and tied the credit to the number of courses covered by each subject-specific exam. Yet, the reform has raised vocal criticism. The second chance offered by an entrance exam has been dear to many, but the focus of criticism has been that due to its biggest course-load, advanced mathematics brings most credit even in fields where proficiency in it might appear of less value. An earlier reform of medical faculties’ student admission in 2014 increased the weight given to advanced mathematics, with the positive consequence of increasing the share of girls sitting for the exam. We expect the present reform to have a similar impact despite the current critique.

In this presentation, we explore the impact of the reform on upper secondary schools – on students’ course choices and attainment, on their plans for the exams to include in their matriculation examination, on student wellbeing and possible burnout, and on students’ and teachers’ views on the reform.

The data is drawn from an ongoing (spring 2022 – spring 2023) study on the effect of the 2018 student admission reform on upper secondary schools and students, compiled to inform a re-writing of the respective admission criteria in 2023 due to the presumed negative impact of the reform on upper secondary students’ width and depth of studies (choice of subjects in the relatively free syllabus), and on their wellbeing. The data comprise questionnaires for students (n = 8,000), teachers, principals and guidance counsellors in sixteen upper secondary schools, register data on the sampled students‘ course choices and attainment, and additional focus-group interviews of students and teachers in five upper secondary schools. Furthermore, the data comprises national matriculation examination data of 2016–2022 to investigate possible changes in students’ exam choices across the implementation of reform. Reflecting the cross-sectional survey data and the largely descriptive research questions, the results for the quantitative data will be mainly presented at the descriptive level, using ANOVA for variable-based profile analysis (e.g., math-oriented vs. humanistic-subjects- oriented students, high vs. low achievers, etc.) and group-level (e.g., gender, home background) comparisons. Due to the wide variability of students’ study paths within the relatively free upper secondary syllabus (of the 75 courses required for matriculation, only 45/52 are mandatory for basic/advanced mathematics) and students’ free choice for the order in which they study the different subjects (only advanced mathematics requires having a course in all of the five periods across the year), multi-level analysis is expected to be a valid option for only some specific questions. The interview data will be used at this point to just provide ‘real-life’ examples of how the students and teachers see and talk about the issues brought up by the quantitative data used as the bases for the focus-group discussions.

The preliminary data of 4,000 students suggest that, on average, students prefer the earlier practice of entrance examinations, still in use for half of new students. There were statistically significant but weak (p<.001, ƞ2 < .01) differences in this, related to students’ gender and choice of advanced vs. basic mathematics, with students of advance mathematics who perform, on average, better in all exams (Kupiainen et al., 2018) more in favor of the matriculation examination-based student admission. They were also more confident in being accepted to university on the basis of their examination results. Yet, most students predicted that they will prepare for the entrance examination once the matriculation exams are over (a necessity for many as the results from the matriculation examination-based selection come only just before the entrance examinations), a problem contrary to the goals of the reform and brought up also by the study on the impact of the reform from the universities’ point of view (Karhunen et al., 2022). As expected, the larger credit awarded for advanced mathematics was criticized especially by students of basic mathematics (5.46 vs. 4.43 on a seven-point Likert scale, p<.001, ƞ2=.068). While public discussion has blamed the reform for leading students to choose courses based on the credit awarded for the different exams in the admission process, according to the survey, students still see personal interest in the subject as a clearly stronger incentive for their choice of the exams they plan to sit for (mean 5.67 vs. 4.58 on a seven-point Likert scale). Even if the majority of students (58.6%) expected to be admitted to university based on their matriculation examination results, a much greater majority (82.5%) was ready to use the possibility allowed by the reform to take the exams anew if they were not.

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