Education system in Finland- something to aim for

[Parker231]

Something many countries should aspire to. Formal schooling starts at age seven, teachers are required to have a Masters, no standardised testing and homework is at an average of half an hour a day. Schools in Finland are ranked amongst the top in the world.

Just to let you know my kids went through the German school system both public and private .There were always 30 kids in the class sometimes 31 .The schools in all major urban areas like Munich are all over subscribed so much so that many classrooms are now held in containers on the Campus . it is a very very tough system and involvement from parents is crucial especially for those that struggle .It has like many school systems its advantages and disadvantages but is in no way perfect either.

Christ!

You think we have a global position ?? As what? America's lapdog? The world sees us fucking clowns, with a clown for a leader, who has been replaced by a Thatcher tribute act.

The 'umpteen cultures' as per Daily Mail, is in fact no more than a former colonial power can expect, its near 80% white british as per last census in 2019, in the remaining 20% are a large portion of ex colonial citizens.

As someone posted, London has 'umpteen cultures' and produces far superior results to the rest of the UK,

For a tiny population, Finland influenced the whole outcome of World War 2, have you not heard of the Winter War, obviously not. Finnish companies have dominated the world and remain in Finnish control, in tech and paper.

One thing absent in Finland is a sense of superiority over other nations based on a dead imperial past . Something we as a nation really have to get over our fucking selves. They can hang their flags out without all the jingo-ism bullshit we have and they have no Royal family that is worshipped simply because they were born lucky.

'We are not really going backwards'

Who the fuck will look at the state of the UK today and agree with that???

And before anyone says, 'If you don't like the UK fuck off' The answer is no, I love this country, it's my home, but my love isn't blind. Criticising what's shit about it doesn't make me less British.

The thing is, education doesn’t happen in isolation. Would you like to live in a Finnish society in return for their education system?

Friends from Finland say that it also has social problems - just not identical ones to us. There is a problem with racism (in fact, one Finn has nothing good to say about either Danes or Russians). It isn’t a utopia.

Personally, I don't know any country where the rich want their kids to mix with the poor. That's why it doesn't happen elsewhere.

I'd like to see this system in Finland a bit closer, to see the distribution of rich kids and poor kids in each school, where the "gifted" go, where the imigrants' kids go. I don't doubt it is much better than the uk, but I'd love to figure out the details about it.

In Scotland the Greens are pushing to replicate the Finnish system.

Also in a lot of local authorities you can now defer in Scotland if your child's birthday is from August onwards.

Before it was only Jan/Feb birthdays but it's now from August onwards so more children can and will start school later.

The issue with this is the infrastructure isn't there in early years to support this and ensure all abilities are catered for in a nursery setting.

I've also heard anecdotally that it's mainly the middle classes deferring as there is less pressure on child care with those more affluent families able to work round the limitations of nursery and the state funded hours.

Finland's an amazing country, but beware of the educational timelag effect; the kids who produced those very good PISA results in the early 2000s were basically going to school in the 1990s--a generation ago.

Since the start of the century, Finland has been moving more and more in the direction of Sweden (holistic, interdiciplinary, kids running around doing forest school, getting rid of desks in rows etc.). That's nice for the kids, no doubt, but the kids who have done more and more of this have done progressively less well in their tests.

Also, while Finland did well in PISA (which is mostly about reading comprehension), it was always an unremarkable performer in TIMSS, which is more curriculum-based and focuses on STEM. Finland's strong performance in reading, by the way, is exclusively the result of Finnish girls being really good at reading. Finnish boys' reading skills are very average and only a little bit better than those of UK or American boys, despite the fact that they have a much, much easier writing system to contend with and should therefore be doing a lot better without even trying. Finland's gender gap (between girls and boys) is the largest in the OECD.
www.brookings.edu/research/girls-boys-and-reading/

I am not trying to pour cold water over poor old Finland, which has perfectly decent schools and is a wonderful society in general. But the press has really over-hyped the Finland phenomenom, while failing to understand that there are some basic structural reasons why Finnish kids do quite well...

Basically, they live in a society which loves reading, they have one of the most transparent writing systems in the world (most kids pick up reading from sharing picture books with parents and looking at the subtitles on TV---no wonder the Finns can get away with not really worrying about early reading instruction very much), and then there is Finnish history. Finland was a very poor, downtrodden country until relatively recently in its history; when it eventually achieved independent nationhood, there was a massive push for literacy, education and learning (including the creation of a brand-new, super-logical-and-easy-to-learn writing system), rather like the kind of historical trajectory we saw in some of the East Asian countries of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore in the mid 20th century. Countries which develop rapidly and late, feeling a tremendous sense of "We have to catch up with all the rich countries," tend to have a terrific zest for teaching and learning, at least for a while.

Predictably, Scotland and Wales have been trying to copy appealing-looking bits of Finnish schools, without properly understanding the wider context or the reason why these things might work in Finland. If you delay the teaching of reading for years in English speaking countries, it'll have a negative effect on the kids' outcomes, because it takes such a long time to become properly fluent in reading and writing English, and it's too complex to let the kids just "pick up" from reading the TV autocue and signs and food labels. That's just an example.

Also in a lot of local authorities you can now defer in Scotland if your child's birthday is from August onwards.

Just to be clear, does this mean that the child will (when they do start) enter the same year that they would have entered had they not been deferred?
Or does it mean that they go into the year below, so that they will now be the oldest rather than one of the youngest in their class?

That they will go from being the youngest to the oldest.

That's pretty dodgy (and has nothing to do with the Finnish system).

Middle class parents are the ones in a position to pay for an extra year of childcare, and adding "older" children to the class means that the ones who are now the youngest (mostly from poor families) will be further disadvantaged, because they're being compared to a group of children whose average age is now older. At the end of the day, someone has to be the youngest. It's not ideal to arrange the system so that the youngest in the class is now likely to be the child of the poor family who can't afford an extra year of childcare or the immigrant family who doesn't know how to work the system.

Then again, Scotland's government never seems to miss an opportunity to throw welfare at middle class people.

You get a funded place in nursery in Scotland if you're in one already . We'll you do if you're in a state nursery. And that's full time at 30 hrs. My child started at almost 6. Is very bright academically but needed longer socially. Was not bored. Is also not the oldest in the class. Like pp says, many are doing it. More will do it over time as it becomes more normalised imo.

depends on the council in Scotland whether they will fund another year in nursery, the cut off date is 29th February, everywhehere allows deferral of Jan/ Feb borns and pays nursery for the extra year. but not all will pay for Aug to Dec borns without a good reason, such as premature birth developmental delay, etc, Glasgow is reluctant to pay for December and hardly ever pays for aug- nov unless documented developmental delay, however you do not legally have to start till the August after you are 5 so you can defer Aug- Dec borns you just might not get funded nursery
all deferred children stay in that year group until they leave school so you always start in P1 whether you are 4½ -5½ ( normal range) or almost 6

But in all fairness it is the teaching that makes the difference

27 years a secondary teacher. Not sure l agree with this. Good teaching is always positive, but there are so many other barriers to learning.

Learning difficulties, emotional difficulties, English as a second language,class size, behaviour, poverty, parental background and aspiration. All of these have huge impacts on learning. As does the fact that some kids will have been abused in some way.

Swings and roundabouts. It works for some kids not others. I have Finnish acquaintances who have put their kids in international school in the U.K. because they were struggling at home.

Also all kids pretty much are at school from 2, they just call it different names.

Taxes are very high, you get what you pay for.

In the Netherlands and Sweden, royalty have attended state schools, (and the Dutch royals are stinking rich, their queen is richer than ours even).

Rich people in Netherlands (and Netherlands is the most un-equal society in Europe with some fantastically rich families keeping a low profile from the Dutch Empire days) have no pressure to send their kids to private schools as the state schools are so good.

In the UK only 50% of the 1% highest earners send their kids private, why would you if you live in an exclusive area ? Wealthy parents in London and the South East flock to state schools if they are good, keep that 25K for Independent day school ( Generally the rich love to save a bob or two).

Also the notion of 'poor' means something totally different in Netherlands , Finland or Sweden compared to the UK .

Of course those make a difference, and those issues are present in every school I have ever taught in, but good teaching, reflective practice, initiatives that rely on teacher led intervention and which are based on subject knowledge and classroom experience - which is what was at the heart of the London initiatives - go a long way to provide kids with real education.

@strawberryband I’m referring to G7 and other world stages where the uk is present. Eg NATO. I wasn’t referring to any historic position. So maybe you could time it form a bit and have a reasonable debate even if you disagree with with people. We are very different to Finland for many reasons. Your rent is not well informed.

reflective practice, initiatives that rely on teacher led intervention and which are based on subject knowledge and classroom experience

But this is just normal teaching, there’s nothing special about it.

All threads like this will have proud parents chipping in about their 'bright children being bored' if they aren't in school by four years of age and how they were already reading and writing before their first day of school. It isn't about bright kids 'reading early'. Its about allowing children to learn through play and not formal reading and writing. Reading and writing at the age of four isn't indicative of future success.

@TizerorFizz

"Also Finland doesn’t have a global position and what they do isn’t all relevant to us."

So you think unless a nation is a member of the G7, what they do isn't at all relevant to us? Like Afghanistan or Syria you mean?

And last time I checked Finland was a represented in the G7 as a EU state.

Also, for many years now, the G20 has represented the real action of the global stage, i.e the BRIC countries which will overtake the G7 this century.

What this has to do with the fact Finnish education system beats ours is beyond me.....

I'm all up for debate, not sure what 'time it form a bit' or 'Your rent is not well informed' refers to though...Is this some sort of code?

The middle class in London play the system to send their kids to the school with the least free school meal kids. I lived 500m from an outstanding primary school, but the catchment area was 150m. All the parents rented (expensive) houses by the school, got places for eldest child and then moved further away guaranteeing the places for the youngest. The school was mostly white middle class in SE London.

People say they want "diversity", but most of the time it means having a minority of non middle class children in the school. Very few middle class parents want little Atticus in a school with 90% immigrant/ minority/ working class kids.

I suppose the same applies in Finland, even though I agree that their definition of "poor" is quite different.

when most people say diversity they mean people who think like them and have same political leanings but slightly different skin tones or religions they don't really mention. They rarely mean a mix of unemployed , working and middle class kids that come from tory / labour families, that includes atheists and evangelical christians and orthodox hasidic jews and both liberal and strict muslims and Hindus etc, people that voted for and against brexit, people for and against abortion / hunting / immigration et etc

In your example you're talking about gentrification, helped by the focus in investment in London schools by Blair's government. Schools massively improved and the middle classes began to send their DC to local schools rather than moving out to the suburbs/going private which was the norm for middle class new parents living in inner London. Once a few middle class parents sent their kids, more and more do.

I don't think any white middle class parents are against diversity if they choose to live in a melting pot like London, it's just everyone in this country chooses to socialise and send their DC along class lines.

In Finland of course there are rich and poor , rich districts and poorer districts and districts where certain immigrants have settled, but the absence of elite private school, having high standards in housing and universal high standards in education and social care means the differences are less stark. It's almost impossible to be a slum landlord in Finland, or get away with yearly rent increases of 50%.

You cannot increase rent here by 50% every year either. Not to the same tenant.

I was being facetious with the 50% figure, but it's perfectly legal in the UK for a landlord to put up rent massively, my best friend saw her flat go up 25% this year. Sure, she can take him to a tribunal and join the 300 or so people who do that every year , most of those cases, the tribunal agree the rent should go up.

prove me wrong @TizerorFizz

www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/renting/london-rents-cost-of-renting-out-of-control-b1020357.html

BTW in FInland there is rent control on private renting, but the biggest landlord in Helsinki for example is the city of Helsinki who have subsidised rent and rent is controlled. In contrast the biggest landlord in London is a billion dollar private company part owned by Qataris and Americans- says it all really...