Success Stories: Impact on Education Policy

INVEST has been very successful in improving conditions for research-informed policy-making and strengthened policy engagement especially in the areas of education policy and social policy. Here’s a summary of the impact INVEST has managed to make on education policy in 2019-2020.

In 2020, the Finnish Government drew up a draft of the education policy report. The report examines the entire education system and establishes a vision to increase the level of education and competence in Finland by 2040.

Many INVEST researchers’ studies have been used in the draft as an evidence-base for the current state, aims and measures. For example, the findings presented in the State of Inequality in Finland in 2020 have been taken into account. The report, to which 12 established INVEST researchers contributed to, provides an overview on socioeconomic inequality, racism, and gendered body size discrimination in Finland.

In order to influence the future level of education, learning outcomes, educational equality and equal opportunities, INVEST has engaged with educational policy also proactively.

In 2020, Director Jani Erola acted as a member of the scientific panel of the Ministry of Education and Culture’s (MEC) Higher Education Accessibility Programme. He has also provided a review on the role of family background in higher educational attainment in Finland presented e.g. in MEC’s public webinar in November 2020.

Elina Kilpi-Jakonen, in turn, has engaged with the MEC officials and the National Board of Education during 2020 to provide evidence related to intergenerational education perspectives.

Kilpi-Jakonen has also engaged with the National Coalition Party and the Finnish Government in the Future Threats of Health and Wellbeing workshop related to the Government report on future focusing on 10 – 20 year period perspectives restricted to key strategic issues relative to policy decisions and submitted to Parliament. She also wrote a chapter for the Social Integration Review commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment in 2019.