Suppressing religious schools in Finland?

Eugene Volokh blogs here about a disturbing development in Finland:

In its Thursday session the [Finnish] government decided to deny licenses for new private schools, as well as to turn down applications for the expansion of the activities of existing schools. . . .

Minister of Education Antti Kalliomäki (soc dem) said in a statement Thursday that it was not the function of schools to proclaim one single truth, religious or otherwise. "One school teaching according to the convictions of some and a second school teaching according to the convictions of others is not real pluralism." Mr Kalliomäki previously proposed also denying extensions to fixed-term licenses held by existing private schools. . . .

Volokh writes:

It's dangerous enough when state and local governments have a de facto near monopoly over primary and secondary education, as they do in the U.S. But at least here private schools are legal, though they labor under a stiff competitive disadvantage against the government-subsidized public schools; and even public schools are mostly controlled at the state level and the local level, not at the federal level. When a government actually prohibits private schools (which would be unconstitutional in the U.S., incidentally), or prohibits new private schools, that seems much more troublesome. And if the Finnish government's control over the schools is centralized (a matter that I'm not sure about) rather than mostly decentralized, that would be more troubling still.

The "not the function of schools to proclaim one single truth" argument also strikes me as weak to the point of disingenuousness. I will bet you that government-run Finnish schools, like all government-run schools and likely all schools, period, do proclaim one single truth on certain matters. . . .

Finally, I recognize that many people support government-run schools precisely because they do teach an orthodoxy, an orthodoxy that one hopes will create better future citizens, and a more cohesive society. But my view is that the benefits of such government-imposed teaching of orthodoxy are considerably outweighed by the risks.

I agree.