[Skybird]

For the sake of completeness, one should remind of one fact: the PISA studies beside expected confirmations have also produced some very counter-intuitive and self-contradicting data on several countries and especially Finland, too, its just that you need to dig that out in the web, because the mainstream media do not bring it up: their job is to sell the Finnish model as the holy grail, not to scratch its painting. For example I remember that numbers for Finland show the greatest gender disparity in Finland amongst all european states, with girls outclassing boys by some very hefty margin. Also, I recall by memory, it still is unexplained why a PISA study was not able to confirm the thesis for Finland that high interest in reading correlates with high competence in reading - PISA delivered numbers once that indicated that there is no link between both variables.

So, either with the PISA methods or with the Finnish system or with both, not everything may be like it seems. Could also indicate a favouring of female gender at the cost of the male students.