Student- and system-level assessment in Nordic countries and in Estonia

Although the Nordic countries and Estonia share many similarities in their basic education system, student assessment and evaluation of educational systems in these countries are implemented in many ways. Even though international assessments such as the OECD's PISA and their results have influenced the development of the educational systems of these countries, in this review article, we analyze and compare how national student-level assessments and system-level evaluations are implemented in the Nordic countries and Estonia. This study is based on a critical analysis of 40 documents. The document analysis has been used in an abductive-driven manner. Our results show that, in both student- and system‑level assessments, there are significant differences among all the Nordic countries and Estonia in terms of how many assessments are conducted, in which grades they take place during compulsory education, and for what purposes the results are used. The results show how system-and student-level assessments are implemented differently in the Nordic countries and in Estonia. However, our results also show that mother tongue and mathematics are almost invariably assessed at the system- and student-level. The research themes and results discussed in this paper are essentially related to the special issue of this journal from the perspective of how learning outcomes and students’ performance are assessed.