Laura Heiskala

Formal differentiation at upper secondary education in Finland: subject-level choices and stratified pathways to socio-economic status and unemployment

This paper looks at how Finnish students’ track placement at upper secondary school is associated with their later-life socio-economic status and probability of unemployment using high-quality full population register data. The study finds that choosing advanced maths – in a system where students are given the freedom to make their own subject-level decisions – leads … Read more

Educational tracking and long-term outcomes by social origin: Seven countries in comparison

This paper uses longitudinal data from seven countries to assess how systems of educational tracking can impact on social mobility. Studies which simply compare comprehensive and tracked systems may be flawed, the research suggests, because of differences in how countries separate students for instructional purposes. The researchers used large-scale longitudinal data from Denmark, England, Finland, … Read more

Compensatory and multiplicative advantages: Social origin, school performance, and stratified higher education enrolment in Finland

This research finds that even in Finland, enrolling in higher education depends on students’ school performance and their parents’ education. The study uses register data from Finland, where students take entrance exams for higher education and where the education system involves both universities and polytechnics, to look at how social origin and school performance is … Read more

Tracking and sorting in the Finnish educational system

This report gives a brief overview of educational tracking and sorting in the Finnish educational system. In Finland, students are divided into different tracks relatively late even though between and within-school tracking exists at all educational levels in some forms. In this report, we present descriptive empirical analyses of long-term consequences of educational tracking by … Read more

Compensatory or multiplicative advantage? Parental resources, school achievement and access to higher education in Finland

This research finds that even in Finland, enrolling in higher education depends on students’ school performance and their parents’ education. The study uses register data from Finland, where students take entrance exams for higher education and where there are both universities and polytechnics, to look at how parental resources – such as education – can … Read more