Salon: How Finland became an Educational Leader
"A new documentary is being released on how Finland has achieved educational success in the past 30 years or so. I'm looking forward to the film; here's an interview with the director about the high level of accountability required of the teachers, and the virtual absence of tests.
Basically, they put a vast responsibility on the teachers' shoulders, but they then afford them respect, prestige, compensation, and autonomy.I read the article and I was curious:
No, you can't compare Finland to the US. But you CAN compare it to Minnesota. And you CAN find important reforms that will work here."
- How they made the transition to only 1 out of 10 applicants were deemed qualified to be hired as a Teacher?
- What did they do with all the "existing Teachers" that did not meet the new criteria?
- How do they attract these very qualified to this "high prestige", yet not necessarily "high compensation" career?
Thoughts?
Other Links:
BBC Finland's School Results
History of Finland's Reform
Ecoles: Limitations of Finnish Ed
Wiki Finland Demographics
Note: looks like Finland just started to allow immigration in last ~10 yrs. Not sure what that means.
Wiki Minnesota Demographics
5 comments:
Finland is a prosperous but very small nation. It's sort of like what Edina would be, if Edina were a country, and it has a school system to match. We have to be careful in extrapolating what happens in the Finnish school system to a much larger and much more diverse country such as our own.
--Hiram
I tried to find out what this marvelous system costs per child with no success yet. Maybe later...
And as Annie noted, it may not work here, but what can we learn from it?
It seems only allowing the top 10% of applicants access to our kids would be a good start. Though I am not sure it is possible given our financial and union constraints.
Hiram--you're correct that Finland is prosperous now. But I didn't realize that back in the early 70s, when they made the commitment to overhaul their educational system, they were comparatively poor; in many ways they had more in common with Soviet-bloc nations than their Scandinavian neighbors.
Their investment in education was the keystone of their vision for their nation's future; they don't have a great educational system because they're rich, they're rich because they have a great educational system. I'm no expert in the field, but I believe they weren't Edina back when they began. Maybe more like, I dunno, Albert Lea?
I agree that we can't just replicate their system, and the transition to any new structure/philosophy would be extraordinarily difficult. Even the Finn Tea Party-type movement (anti immigration, strongly nationalistic, populist) is staunchly left wing economically, so culturally they're very different from us.
Still, I think we can learn from them.
--Annie
John,
Being an education geek I have just spent a couple of hours skim reading a very long recent report.
Strong Performers and Successful
Reformers in Education
Lessons from PISA
for the United States
I didn't see specific $ per pupil spent by Finland but I did see this summary statement:
Finland is by no means the highest spender per pupil among oecd countries, so money cannot be an important factor in explaining Finland’s success.
It is not surprising that the USA is the highest spender (or maybe 2nd?)
It seemed to me the main point in the Finland chapter was how teaching there is a high status profession. I found this description of the Finnish teachers' use of time mind boggling;
"one of the most striking facts about finnish schools is that their students have fewer hours of instruction than students
in any other oecd country. this means that finnish teachers teach fewer hours than their peers. in lower secondary
schools, for example, finnish teachers teach about 600 hours a year – 800 lessons of 45 minutes each, or four
lessons per day. By contrast, uS middle school teachers teach about 1 080 hours, or six daily lessons of 50 minutes.
.... leaving aside the important question of how finnish 15-year-olds manage to outperform
peers in other nations despite the equivalent of three less years of schooling, the relevant question here is what finnish
teachers are doing when they are not engaged in classroom teaching.
With the professional autonomy finnish teachers enjoy comes very substantial responsibility for tasks that in other
systems are typically handled more centrally. chief among these are curriculum and assessment. as described
above, the national core curriculum is really a framework rather than a roadmap, leaving teachers an enormous
amount of discretion to interpret that framework, select their own textbooks and other curriculum materials, and
then design their own lessons, all of which require time.
There was tons of interesting info in the 250 page report. Maybe I'll pass along some of what I found interesting in a later comment.
Ontario is another success story that interests me, as they seem to have more in common with USA culture and challenges (like high number of immigrants)
John, the "Hisotry of FInland's Reform" document/paper/chapter is a very informative read. Thanks for posting it.
I recommend anyone interested in education reform read it--Laurie,I think you'd enjoy it. It examines the history, process, and results of Finland's "experiment".
Also, several of John's questions from the original post are answered. Specifically, the question of cost. A dollar figure isn't assigned, but there's a useful chart on page 10 that shows expenditures by nation and the associated scores in science.Finland is middle on spending and highest on results. US is highest on spending and lowest on results.
--Annie
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