Strengths and Weaknesses of Educational Equity in English Language Teaching at Iranian and Finnish Primary and Secondary Schools

Considering educational equity in English education as an important issue at schools in this modern time, this study aimed at comparing English education at schools of Iran and Finland from an educational equity point of view. The researcher used a qualitative research method comprising library method of research to do this study. To this end, a lot of up-to-date and useful articles, theses and dissertations were selected, and studied to compare English education at schools of Iran and Finland from an educational equity perspective. According to these materials, some features of English education in Iran and Finland from an educational equity perspective were extracted. These basic features were about the weaknesses, and strengths of English education at schools in Iran and Finland with respect to the matter of educational equity. Then, all of these features were coded in numbers according to the hierarchy of importance and literature, and put in Tables 1 and 2. The salient result of this study revealed that English education at schools with respect to the matter of educational equity is more powerful in Finland than in Iran, since there is no difference between public and private schools in Finland about the age at which a student starts learning English, the quality of English education, and the quality of educational equipment in English classes. Eventually, the study indicated that educational equity in English education is so weak at Iranian schools. Therefore, Educational system of Iran should try to find innovative methods to improve its educational equity at schools to an optimal level. The results may contribute to English policy making process and English course planning. Then, the study provides some suggestions for improvement of educational equity in English education at public schools in Iran.