Mrs Sybil Edwards, Head of Lilley House
As a teacher and a parent of school-aged children, I follow the debates in the media about the direction of Australia’s educational policies with great interest. Falling rankings in international tests and arguments surrounding funding models have led many commentators to compare Australia’s educational system with those of other countries. With my mother’s family hailing from Finland and having lived and gone to school there for a year, I am always intrigued to read the numerous references to Finland in newspapers and television reports. Following outstanding results in international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in which Finnish students outperform their counterparts in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, nations such as Australia and the United States have sought to understand the Finnish approach, particularly because it is in contrast to the regimented style employed by other academic powerhouses such as South Korea and Singapore.
In Finland, there is no public/private school divide since all schools are public. For this reason comparisons between Brisbane Girls Grammar and the Finnish model are difficult to make, but tempting nevertheless. Having some schools with beautiful buildings, fantastic resources and high quality teachers while others are average or struggle, is completely against the Finnish philosophy of equality. In Finland there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ schools, with the variance between schools on the PISA scales for instance being about 5 per cent, whereas in Australia it is about 33 per cent (Sahlberg, 2009, p. 6). You can go to any suburb, district, or town in Finland and you will see virtually no difference in the standard of the schools. The main aim for the educational policies in Finland is not excellence but equality and the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn regardless of family background, income or geographic location is paramount. Excellence has merely been the by-product of their egalitarian system. Everything relating to education, from tuition, books and materials, transport and importantly, a two-course hot meal every day, is provided free by the state. While it is true that Finland is a more homogeneous country than Australia, it is interesting to note that in the last decade, the number of immigrants has doubled and even in those areas where there is a high concentration of foreign-born students, there is no variation in their PISA scores (Virkkunen, 2011 p. 2).
So what does the Finnish school system look like? Finns start school when they are seven as they believe in extending childhood as long as possible before formal education and typically have nine years of compulsory education — six years of primary and three years of lower secondary. After that they can choose to continue at either a vocational or general secondary school for another three years. I actually spent six months at a Home Economics high school, Kauhajoen Kotitalousopisto, and six months at a general high school, Kauhajoen Lukio, so I feel that I have a fairly good understanding of the two settings. In 2009, 55 per cent of students attended a general high school and 37 per cent chose to go to a vocational high school and there was the further option of a tenth grade of basic education after which the majority of those students continued back into mainstream high schools.
When I attended the general high school in the mid-1980s, a system of streaming according to ability groups in maths and foreign languages was in place, but in 1985 that was completely changed to a modular curriculum structure without streaming, age-cohort based groupings or semesters. The curriculum framework now gives the students a lot of freedom to plan both the content and the time sequencing of their studies. Interestingly, this big overhaul in the education system did not involve a rise in government expenditure and, in fact, the total expenditure on educational institutions as a percentage of GDP declined in the 1990s (from 7.9 per cent in 1992 to 6.3 per cent in 1995). Even today, Finland’s education expenditure is only average for OECD countries compared with a country such as the United States, which spends the most, yet has some of the lowest results. The Finns believe that efficiency is more important than the level of expenditure (Sahlberg, 2009, p. 2). From my experience, I would like to point out that Finnish schools concentrate purely on the academic and leave co-curricular activities to community organisations. They don’t run sporting competitions, orchestras, drama productions or the different kinds of clubs that are on offer at a school such as Girls Grammar. While schools are well designed, they do not feature the magnificent grounds and buildings that are found in some of our independent schools. In fact, many years ago, a relative of mine who was a Principal at a specialist music high school in Helsinki, visited our School and was overwhelmed by the standard of both our music programme and the facilities on offer.
One of the biggest differences between the Finnish system and ours in Australia is that there are no standardised, high-stakes testing at all until the National Matriculation Examinations. The focus is solely on learning rather than passing exams, and achievement is defined in relation to a student’s own development and growth rather than in relation to universal standards. Entrance into university is not just determined by the equivalent of our OP score but rather students have to sit separate exams to be accepted into the university course of their choice. A by-product of this lack of emphasis on testing seems to be a drop in levels of anxiety and stress among both teachers and students. A feature of Finnish schools that is often commented on by visiting foreign journalists is the calm and creative environment and one contributing aspect to this may be the lack of assessment anxiety.
The Finns believe that the cornerstone of their education system is the excellence of their primary schools and the philosophy that ‘no child should slip through the cracks’ is taken very seriously. Most schools are small (a third of schools are less than 50 students) and they often have the same teacher for more than one year of their primary schooling. Also the remedial help offered to struggling students is impressive with about 25 per cent receiving extra support (Virkkunen, 2011, p. 3) with assistant teachers being available in most classrooms. Literacy levels for primary school aged students in Finland have always been high (Sahlberg, 2009, p. 3) even before the education reforms in the 1990s and I have my own theory about why this could be the case. Although Finnish is an incredibly difficult language for foreigners to learn because it is not an Indo–European language (completely different to Germanic or Romance language families), it is actually phonetic. Surely this would make reading easier and they would not have the same spelling problems that we have with English. Secondly, all American and English television shows and movies are subtitled rather than dubbed and I believe that this not only gives children plenty of reading practice but also assists in learning English as a foreign language.
When Finnish educationalists are asked why their system has been so successful, their answer is always that the main reason lies in the quality of their teachers. Teachers have always been highly respected members of society; it is also an extremely prestigious profession. It attracts the very top students and is said to be harder to get into a teaching degree at university than a medical degree (Sahlberg, 2011, p. 24). Only eight universities are permitted to train teachers and there is great competition to gain entry into these elite courses. Only about 10 per cent of applicants actually succeed in gaining a place to study teaching and some applicants try for a number of years after working as teacher aids and doing further study to better their chances. They must not only pass the entrance exam but they are also subjected to rigorous interviews to ascertain that their temperament and personal qualities are suited to teaching. One point that is often raised about teacher quality in Finland is the fact that every teacher must obtain a Master’s degree, their course consisting of three years of specialist subject study followed by two years of specific teacher training. While Masters’ degrees vary from country to country, the fact that this is a requirement points to the high value that is placed on the teaching profession, the serious weight given to instructing youth.
Why are the very top students in Finland seeking to be teachers? They are not paid any more than teachers in Australia but in Finland perhaps there is not such a gap between other lucrative professions such as law and medicine. Another theory is that the Finns are not as materialistic and that the prestige and autonomy that is afforded teachers and other excellent working conditions are enough to attract them and keep them in the education field. The drop-out rate of teachers is also extremely low (Virkkunen, 2011, p. 3).
With so much debate about the future of education in Australia at present, it has been very interesting to read about a country which went through a similar process in the 1990s and which has apparently achieved a lot of success through its reforms. It is, however, unrealistic to think that we could transfer the Finnish model into an Australian setting but certain areas such as teacher training could well provide some food for thought.
References
Compton, R. A. (Director). (2011). The Finland Phenomenon [Video file]. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkNK3gY-rxg
Frassinelli, L. (2006, August 18). Educational Reform in Finland. Retrieved from Michigan State University website: https://www.msu.edu/user/frassine/EAD845%20-%20Educational%20Reform%20in%20Finland.pdf Article available at http://www.docstoc.com/docs/49725333/Educational-Reform-in-Finland
Maes, B. (2010, February 24). What Makes Education in Finland that Good. Retrieved from Bert Maes Blog: http://bertmaes.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/why-is-education-in-finland-that-good-10-reform-principles-behind-the-success/
Partanen, A. (2011, December 29). What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success. Retrieved from The Atlantic website: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
Ravitch, D. (2012, March 8). Schools we can envy. Retrieved from The New York Review of Books website: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/schools-we-can-envy/?pagination=false
Sahlberg, P. Dr. (2009, April). A Short History of Educational Reform in Finland. Retrieved from Michigan State University website: https://www.msu.edu/user/frassine/EAD845%20-%20Educational%20Reform%20in%20Finland.pdf Article available at http://www.disal.it/Resource/Finland-Sahlberg.pdf
Snider, J. (2011, March 16). An Interview with Henna Virkkunen, Finland’s Minister of Education. Retrieved from The Hechinger Report: http://hechingerreport.org/content/an-interview-with-henna-virkkunen-finlands-minister-of-education_5458
Published 28 February 2014