Chapter 12: Inclusive and Collaborative School Network Planning in Finland: A Critical Process for Rural Schools

This chapter looks at the schooling and school system in Finland, focusing on the present state of the school network and its planning, and the challenges of future planning, based on a series of school network studies. Developments in school network planning have critical significance for small rural schools whose futures frequently hang in the balance. Hence this chapter’s special relevance for rural educational provision, as Finnish school network planning shifts towards a more democratic and collaborative process.

Changes in Finnish school networks have been directed particularly towards small rural schools, threatened, as they have been, after a long period of time, by earlier changes in Finnish society. A declining birth rate, and structural changes in the countryside, including increasing out-migration with urbanization and advances in rural infrastructure, saw school closures beginning in the late 1960s (Autti & Hyry-Beihammer, 2014; Tantarimäki, 2010). By the 2000s, these longer, nationwide “waves” or variables have changed to several smaller, local, and more municipality-led adaptations, sometimes affected by “extra flavors” like chance, simultaneousness, and short-sightedness (Tantarimäki & Törhönen, 2017; see Table 12.1). We shall return to the changes in the 2000s in more detail later in this chapter.