Finland has a parallel school system, in which the Swedish-speaking minority (6 %) and Finnish-speaking majority schools are run side by side. Furthermore, they have same curriculums and resources. These parallel educational systems are also assessed in both national and international assessments – at least with their own weight. Differences between the parallel educational systems in Finland have not been the main focus in national or international studies previously.

In Finland the Ministry of Education and Culture formulates the overall strategy for educational evaluation. Finland’s participation into international assessments is financed by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The National Board of Education carries out national assessments of curricular outcomes in education. The Finnish educational system differs in some aspects from most countries participating for instance in PISA. Evaluation has become in many countries an important steering tool. In Finland the role of educational evaluation is seen more as supporting the development of education and improving the conditions for learning.

PISA is a global measure to benchmark nations’ student achievement at the end of compulsory education. PISA 2003, 2006 and 2009 assessments revealed great differences in educational outcome between students from Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking schools in Finland. These differences did equal to two-thirds of a year of education in reading literacy in PISA 2009, for the benefit of the Finnish-speaking students. However, from international perspective the Swedish-speaking schools did well.

PISA results have not been the only assessment that has pointed out differences in educational outcome in Finland. In Assessments conducted by the National Board of Education show similar results in reading literacy (3^rd 7^th and 9^th grades) and in mathematics (3^rd 6^th and 7^th grades). For some other subjects the outcome for students in Swedish-speaking schools are somewhat positive.

This paper summarizes information from both international PISA 2003-2009 assessments and national assessments conducted in Finland between 2005-2010 for both language groups. The results will be presented both from national and international perspectives. This paper makes a contribution to the field of educational development in Finland by examining the latest research findings and gives some developmental proposals based on the previous researches. 

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