Sally Weale: The Finnish education system is the envy of the world

By Dilip -
Finland’s influence is spreading far and wide. Last month a school opened in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam based on the Finnish curriculum and pedagogical approach, with Finnish staff on the teaching team. Kuusimäki tells me Finland’s schools are well-funded and built around the principle of equality of opportunity for all pupils. He is baffled when I try to explain that some state schools in England are so strapped for cash that they are asking parents for donations. “As you may know, everything is free in Finland,” he says, university included.

There is just one fee-paying school in the country, the International School of Helsinki, which has mainly catered for international employees of Nokia and other industries. Otherwise, charging fees is illegal and parents are happy by and large to send their children to their local school. “We really don’t have bad schools,” Kuusimäki says.

In class children are listened to and respected, school lunches are free, detentions are rare and exclusions pretty much unheard of. Kuusimäki gave his last detention 15 years ago, and is visibly horrified at the idea of excluding a child from school. “As a principal, you can’t think like that. We are responsible for these children and their lives. We can’t give up.”

But things are changing slowly. Schools are becoming more diverse – 20% of pupils at Lintulaakson school are from immigrant backgrounds, elsewhere it is 75%. The curriculum has been revised and Kuusimäki says more has had to be done to stretch gifted children. A compulsory pre-school year for six-year-olds has been introduced to help with school-readiness, and there is talk of starting even earlier, while the minimum school leaving age has recently been raised to 18. Meanwhile, parents “shopping for schools” is on the increase.


Finnish education experts would be the first to admit they do not have all the answers and methods in one country do not always translate to another. John Jerrim, professor of education and social statistics at the University College London Institute of Education, does not believe England should be looking to Finland. “Its Pisa scores have actually been in decline. And there is no reason to believe their high scores on international tests are due to their schools. So there is no reason to try to copy Finland.”....
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/sep/27/top-class-finland-schools-envy-world-ofsted-education

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