We Need Finland’s School System

Finland has an education system with its priorities in the right places and the results to match. It’s time for our leadership to take a look over there and say, “Yes! I’ll have what they’re having.”

Linda Darling-Hammond’s indispensable new book The Flat World and Education profiles three countries-Finland, Korea, and Singapore— that had struggling education systems in the 1970s but have aggressively revamped them into superior national systems. I plan to blog more on Darling-Hammond’s opus, but for now, I want to focus on Finland.

 

Finland has much to teach us, if only we pay attention. They didn’t arrive at an equitable, world-class system through our current measures of privatization or accountability via high-stakes testing. The Education System of Finland’s website spells out its mission in a way that starkly differs from ours. (In fact, I couldn’t find any corresponding mission statement on the U.S. Department of Education site— only endless links and a blog.)

Here are a few highlights from Finland:

Competent teachers On all school levels, teachers are highly qualified and committed. Master’s degree is a requirement, and teacher education includes teaching practice. Teaching profession is very popular in Finland, and hence universities can select the most motivated and talented applicants. Teachers work independently and enjoy full autonomy in the classroom. 

This is the ace. What isn’t even mentioned is that all teacher training and degrees are fully paid for by the government, making teaching a competitive and attractive profession. Endless research points to quality teachers in every classroom as the most crucial helper for students; Finland actually invests in making that happen. In the U.S.’s fragmented system, so many teachers enter the classroom with minimal training, heavy student load debt, and a sink-or-swim attitude from their school leaders. Naturally, many would-be competent teachers decide not to even bother. Finland doesn’t have a teacher turnover crisis; quite the contrary, they have a well-trained, highly talented corps of teachers. This is excellence— although I can already anticipate loud, insipid criticism from the American right about government-supported teacher training as a recipe for socialist indoctrination. We need to get over ourselves and realize that investing in teacher training is not optional for developing a sustainable, robust school system. We don’t have that now and it’s killing us.

Encouraging assessment and evaluation The student assessment and evaluation of education and learning outcomes are encouraging and supportive by nature. The aim is to produce information that supports both schools and students to develop. National testing, school ranking lists and inspection systems do not exist.

The last line is clearly a knock at the U.S.’s ideological march toward high-stakes testing as the sole relevant indicator of student and school achievement. We need to shake off the addiction to corporate-assembled tests for our students, and pay attention to implementing rigorous assessments that support, not deaden, kids’ interest in education.

Significance of education in society Finnish society strongly favours education and the population is highly educated by international standards. Education is appreciated and there is a broad political consensus on education policy. 

Darling-Hammond mentions an American tradition of under-investing in preparation. President Obama has committed unprecedented billions to education in his Race to the Top program, but the money is tied to the reforms du jour of tying teacher evaluations to test scores and green-lighting more charter schools. In effect, we’ll get more testing (and practice testing) and more privatization. So much high-stakes testing sucks the soul out of education and charter schools are interesting innovations at the fringes of the system. We cannot privatize our way to a world-class education system that serves all American students. We need a dramatic, bipartisan re-commitment to education. Finland did this, and we can see where it got them— number-one status.

 

My long-distance love affair with Finland continues: it is ranked by Forbes as the second-happiest country in the world. (Side note: it has a single-payer public health care system and 88% of its citizens are satisfied with it. The EU national average for health care satisfaction is 41%.)

Perhaps the U.S./Finland contrast is best elucidated by Finnish policy analyst Pasi Sahlberg, who is cited in depth by Darling-Hammond:

The [No Child Left Behind] legislation… has led to fragmentation in instruction, further interventions uncoordinated with the basic classroom teaching, and more poorly-trained tutors working with students and teachers. As a consequence, schools have experienced too many instructional directions for any student, with an increase in unethical behaviors and a loss of continuity in instruction and systematic school improvement. The difference between this and the Finnish approach is notable: The Finns have worked systematically over 35 years to make sure that competent professionals who can craft the best learning conditions for all students are in all schools, rather than thinking that standardized instruction and related testing can be brought in at the last minute to improve student learning and turn around failing schools.

Much of Darling-Hammond’s examination of Finland can be found here in a 2009 article for Voices in Urban Education, but I recommend getting the book. We’d be fools to ignore what really works on a national level.

Comments

[Amran Noordin]

You may want to read a six-part series that I have written on my blog comparing the Singapore education system and that of Finland.

See http://educononline.com/2009/09/11/education-in-singapore-and-finland-a-comparison-part-1/

[DanBrown]

Thanks Amran. I will check this out.

[Sam]

Looking at the Finnish education with three kids in a Finnish school I would like to point out two things that are connected with getting superior teachers in the classrooms:

- allthough the salaries are not high, they are the same each month - even June, July and half of August, when kids and tachers alike are on holiday. This makes teaching an attractive profession.

- school days are also among the shortest in the world, and these two features mean that teachers are rather well paid compared to the amount of working hours. They can also teach students that are awake, which makes a difference.

All education in Finland is free, law and medicine just as well as engineering and architecture. There are no fees in any field of education. The taxes are high, but this is about the only way we can absolutely guarantee that any and every one with talent will get to the top in any field, no matter what one's background or funds are. This makes the society rather competitive - you cannot buy the education if you fail to be among the top that will be qualified, and the lack of funding does not drop anyone out of the competition. The same goes with techers, they are not an exception. Rather early the pupils understand the same thing - if they are not working hard and learning, they are not going to have an academic career, ever.

[Paul]

Dan,
I love these facts and figures...but it must be noted that Finland is slightly smaller than Montana, with only about 5 million people, 99% of who are either Finn or Swede. Comparing anything of of theirs to the ours seems like a tough sell.

[Sarah Applegate]

I am a public school teacher currently researching in Finland through a Fulbright grant. I have been most struck by a few things in the short time I have been here: 1. Teacher training is extensive and intensive. The master teacher stays in the room the entire time observing, many university people are there observing and providing feedback regularly and teachers teach in teams, especially at the beginning. 2. They provide social services as a country (health care) and lunch, hot, healthy lunch to all students, every day. 3. Students have choices and opportunities in the school day. Students at a middle school ("basic education") might take 10 different classes, including hands on courses like handicrafts (like our "shop") and textiles and PE. There are places for many kinds of students to excel. 4. There are opportunities for all students after basic education. Want to be a hairdresser? Ok! 3 years, free training at a vocational school. After vocational school, you want to go to university? Ok! Study for the exam and you can make the switch. The "track" is flexible.

Bottom line: the US needs to fully fund education and not just give lip service to "valuing" it.

[http://www.pingwin.co.il/]

Coaching career is very well-known in Finland, and hence schools can decide on the most encouraged and skilled people. Instructors work separately and enjoy full independence in the educational setting.