Finnish Culture’s Influence on Education System

This guest post by Massachusetts State Representative Jennifer Benson is another in a series by members of the Massachusetts Education Delegation as they tour Finland.

After 2 days, 2 school visits and a meeting at the National Board of Education I have begun shaping some impressions on the Finnish educational system, and more importantly, the Finnish culture.  I have had the opportunity to talk with teachers and administrators, students and parents, as well as an education official and believe that much of the successes in the Finnish system is due to the inherent Finnish culture and their choice to enhance those cultural advantages through policy.  

The Finns clearly have a strong belief in supporting families, and value children and their advancement beyond all else.  Education is free through the university level.  This is stated in law – no family can be charged for education – including books, transportation or meals.  Leo Pahkin, Counsellor of Education at Finnish National Board of Education, summed it up this way “Finland’s main exports are wood and heads, but now wood not so much”.  The Finns believe that their future success is in innovation, and the key ingredient is a strong education.  In addition to education, the Finns provide health care, high quality childcare, and very generous paid maternity leave.  Childcare providers must be university trained.  

Education policy is built upon 5 guiding principles: 1 – Common, consistent long-term policies, 2 – A broad commitment to a vision of a knowledge-based society, 3 – Educational equality; must be free to all and equal regardless of ability, 4 – Devolution of decision making power to the local level, 5 – Culture of trust.

Their common curriculum framework is simple and straight forward.  Much of the decisions around curriculum are left to local communities and much of the teaching methodology is left up to individual teachers.  There are no formal teacher or school evaluations, each building self-evaluates and teachers assist each other with problems in the classroom.  It is considered a hallmark of Finnish culture to trust one another to do his or her best.  

Teachers are well trained; only 10% of University students are accepted into the 5 year required university programs.  The profession is highly regarded, I believe more so than in the US.  They are held to a similar esteem, though not financially, to doctors and lawyers within society. Teachers are rarely fired, instead they are expected to ask for help when struggling with an issue and colleagues will assist.

Students are not tested nearly as often.  A typical evaluation model is to treat the teacher as a coach who evaluates a child by writing as assessment of strengths and areas to improve, believing that it is more beneficial to improvement.  Children are also taught about how to learn, study techniques and personal learning style, in order to empower them as individual learners.  The only “high stake test” is the comprehensive assessment completed at the end of the compulsory education period, which is 9th grade.  A student’s future plans, whether to continue on to an upper secondary school, and which one, or to a professional institute is decided partly on this test.  Upper secondary schools are competitive, a student can only apply to 6, and if no acceptance is granted a student is out of school until the next year’s testing date comes around to retest, or can attend a professional institute.  There seems to be some stress on parents at this point, and it seems to be the only area of competition in the pre-university school system.

Finding ways to mimic the Finnish success model is difficult.  So much is based on cultural aspects that are vastly different than that of the US. There seems to be little debate on the direction of education, regardless of political ideology, which allows continuity in education that can be improved over time with small changes that are measured and based in research.  Finland is also fairly homogenous as far as language, religion and background with a small population and a strong centralized government.  All of these criteria, I believe, help to make change easier to implement and to track successes.  

Tomorrow we will be meeting with the Ministry of Education and the University of Helsinki where we will learn more about teacher training. Tomorrow night we will leave for Stockholm.  I am looking forward to comparing the Finnish and Swedish systems.

Here is a link to the presentation we received today: http://prezi.com/jnm83nw9fob3/education-system/

Jennifer Benson represents the 37th Middlesex District in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.