ABSTRACT
Globalization seems to be a one-way highway in the future of education politics. Globalization has been described as resulting in the rescaling of politics and policy. It is walking hand in hand with further complicated rise of a new mode of governance at a distance through data, indicators and numbers. New techniques and evaluation data are producing and re-shuffling the positions of the nation states and local spaces. Pressures for globalization and standards are hard. The education systems of the five Nordic countries still display many common inclusive traits, enabled by the continued extensive public funding of education: free of charge education and related services at primary, secondary and tertiary levels, good out pre-school education and childcare, the integration of students in need of special support in ordinary classrooms, etc. In addition, all the Nordic countries retain 9- or even 12-year comprehensive compulsory education with little tracking. In many respects the academic and social divisions of Nordic students are small in terms of international comparisons. To date there remains a kind of Nordic education model that stresses social justice and equality, although the countries have gone in different directions.
