Finland: A bit more...

A few weeks ago, we took a look at schools in Finland in a post titled "What does Finland know that we don't?" Some additional information has come to light that may be of interest.


The National Association of Independent Schools (www.nais.org) has published an article by Patrick Bassett titled "The Finnish Model." Here are some things which are NOT involved in the excellence of Finnish schools:


1)"In Finland, there are virtually no private schools."


2) "It’s not more years of schooling, since compulsory school education starts at grade 1 (age 7) and ends in grade 9 (age 16), after which virtually all (95 percent) of Finland’s students voluntarily attend either upper secondary academic school (headed for university) or upper secondary vocational school (headed for the workplace or to further higher education in polytechnic institutes)."


3) "It’s not small class sizes, since Finnish classes are often 30 students with only one teacher (and few specialists, and the teachers are expected to teach all skills and subjects)."


4) "It’s not a longer school day or longer school year, since school runs from 8:00 am to noon or 2:00 pm, depending on the age of students, and the school year is no longer than in the U.S."


5) "It’s not nationally centralized control (like that of the French) but rather national curriculum standards with local implementation. (A Finnish third-grade teacher told us that, of the 25 periods per week of classes, about five are dictated subjects/skills from the national standards; in the rest, she improvises.)"


6) "It’s not accreditation. There is none in Finland. The federal ministry, with some periodic sampling testing to assure quality control, trusts the local authorities to meet the national standards."


7) "It’s definitely not high-stakes testing, since most of the testing that occurs is formative, not summative. As noted, the government does do periodic sample testing of students to make certain the students, their schools, and the system continue to perform highly (and intervenes aggressively if a school falls behind), but the government refuses to publish the test results for the press or public, eschewing the mania of League Tables in Great Britain and school rankings in the U.S. based on test scores."


What, then, makes the Finnish schools so successful? Bassett quotes an international report on the best-performing schools in the world: " “Get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind.”

Get the best teachers.

"As we’ve known in the U.S. education industry for a long time, the single most important factor for student and school success is high-quality faculty. While the U.S. public system identifies “high-quality” as “highly-qualified,” meaning “certified” (i.e., having an education degree or having taken a battery of education courses), independent schools in the U.S. have long rejected that definition in favor of hiring “high-quality” teachers, meaning those who have a degree in the subject they love and teach (i.e., math and physics majors, not education majors, teaching math and physics)."

" 'Getting the best teachers' means that all teachers must have master’s degrees and that only 10 percent, the cream of the crop of undergraduates, are accepted into the teacher training program. The ministry deliberately restricts access to the program, believing that restrictions increase attraction (a strategy also employed by Teach for America, which routinely attracts five or more candidates for every position). In Finland, it’s not the money but the status and prestige of teaching that attracts the best and brightest into the profession. Ditto for Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, where teachers are also revered."

"Takeaway #1: To improve educational outcomes in U.S. schools, we need to develop a winning strategy for attracting talent. In cultures like ours that don’t give high status to teaching, more money may have to do (until we successfully elevate the profession’s status)."

Get the Best Out of Teachers

"A second arena in which American education falls short, in both public and private segments of the industry, is in “professionalizing the profession.” While there is much talk and some progress in creating “professional learning communities” (PLCs) for teachers, and there is some promise in creating digital communities, we fall far short as a country of what our competitors in the world marketplace are committed to. In Finland, groups of teachers visit each other’s classrooms and plan lessons together, in a system called “lesson studies” that include “rounds” just like the medical profession. Teachers also get an afternoon off per week for professional development (including for school substitutes)."

"Takeaway #2: American schools are way too underinvested in annual professional training and could benefit immensely from creating true PLCs focused on peer learning, peer observations, and collaborative lesson-planning."

Step in when pupils start to lag behind.

"A factor contributing to the success of the Finnish system is the use of early and powerful intervention when a student begins to fall behind. Frequent diagnostic testing (“formative testing”) at early stages reveals students who need extra help, and the Finns provide it intensively (with one special-needs teacher for every seven special-needs students in some schools). ...in Finland, about a third of students receive remediation."

"Takeaway #3: It turns out that all kids can learn, given good teachers, early and intensive intervention, and a supportive school and peer culture. U.S. schools need to move from a medical model (learning disabilities) to a diversity model (learningdifferences), and re-orient themselves to identify, value, and use a student’s strengths as “workarounds” and palliatives to weaknesses."

Anything else?

"Finland is a small, homogenous country of five million, with a common value of high regard for education. Literacy and fluency are a national priority, contributing to good results in literacy examinations. Children see adults reading all the time, since Finns on average check out 18 books from the library per year. (It’s minus 40 degrees for long spells in the winter, so indoor activities like reading are popular.) The Finns, by policy, are committed to fluency in foreign language, as there are two national languages, Finnish and Swedish, taught throughout school. Just about everyone I met also spoke English, in part because Finnish TV uses no dubbing — only subtitles, so children hear English all the time."

"Few textbooks are used, the Finns preferring project- and problem-based approaches integrated with learning in the larger community, and tempered with lots of practical education elements and daily chores at the school. ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is integrated at all levels, including media literacy."