The Finnish students scored highest in the international comparative PISA analysis in 2000 and 2003 of all the participating OECD countries. Finland rose to the top of the world in reading skills first time already in the IEA Study of Reading Literacy  when 1990 - 1993 both  Finnish 9-year-olds and 14-year-olds appeared  to be the best readers. Since then Finnish youngsters have got very good results in all international reading literacy surveys and in the latest Pisa survey also in mathematics, science and problem solving.  Especially in reading the Finnish teenagers have achieved significantly higher results than students in any other country. These results have been repeatedly so convincing that it is worth scrutinising reasons behind this success.

It is interesting to try to find, what the main factors behind the good PISA results are. Being involved it is often difficult to understand what are the factors that constitute the success. There are good reasons to believe that the Finnish school system itself is the main factor but it consists of a number of significant sub-factors. Good results are connected with the curriculum and curriculum design process, teacher education, status of teachers´ in the society, ongoing development work and not the least the whole culture, which values education and learnedness high. Finland has been called a land of readers.