ABSTRACT
The peculiarities in the governance of Finnish basic education are best understood in light of the emergence of quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) as a policy in the early 1990s. The form of governance changed in line with this policy thread, becoming one of the most centralised in Europe during the 1990s after being among the least centralised. Something characterised as a ‘culture of trust’ emerged in the 1990s, coincident with radical municipal and school autonomy and the soft implementation of evaluation. Curiously enough, all this was partly conscious, and partly attributable to something that with hindsight could be called lucky constellations. The public authorities, on both state and local levels, were the key actors.
