At this point they don't have to tell us that Finland is the country in Europe with the best results in the international PISA and PIRLS testsIn fact, it is among the countries - worldwide - whose students demonstrate better competence in Science.
A few years ago, in Peques and Más we talked carefully about the Finnish education system, and we offered a post about 'what's so special', and another about 'what we can learn from others'. Now I found a brief (but clarifying) analysis that summarize the myths that we all believe inherent to education, and yet in the Nordic country they do not adopt. First of all, I want to rescue a sentence from Mar Abad in Yorokobu for you. 'It is clear that education is much more than a collection of knowledge. But what was not so obvious until now was that an effective education system is based on trust. In Finland, the community trusts schools, the population trusts teachers and teachers trust students. ' In Finland these conditions exist, and they surely have a lot to do with their success.
Age issue
Compulsory education there begins a year later, and In the initial cycle the instrumental subjects have a lot of weight, leaving for when they are older language skills, in fact until nine years do not start studying English (although at 18 years young Finns have a higher level than ours). And it seems that there they attach more importance to the conversation than to grammar.
Finnish children do not learn to read until age seven, and in the schools they go to, science and history are not taught at an early age.
Will the methodology also influence?
Surely: to start more emphasis is placed on discussion and reflection, than on memorization, and this is something widespread (because I do not say that in Spain there are no teachers and schools with that orientation, but these are specific experiences). They also teach children to think, but really: to think for themselves. In the classes there are usually 20 students for core subjects, but when they unfold in order to receive elective subjects, they stay in eight or nine children per class.
There are few homework, and so children can attend if they want to other activities of interest, this is possible - also - because in Primary only total 608 teaching hours per year (compared to 875 hours in Spain).
Tony Wagner, the education innovation expert says that 'A few years ago the system was much more centralized but they discovered that the results were better if they gave more power and autonomy to the schools. That is a sample of the population's confidence in the system'.
So schools have more autonomy, and it is the municipalities (not the State) that decide; with this close management, education focuses on the needs of students. On the other hand, Finnish students do not 'feel the pressure to go to University', because each one is good in his own, and the training responds to one's own abilities, so that it is equally valid to study at the University, as in the Polytechnic School.
The last myth is that of money: while here we are concerned about the cuts (and I do not say that without reason), in Finland we will find that both the expenditure per annual student, and the average salary in purchasing power parity of teachers, are lower comparing with Spain.
I stay (and leave you) with this quote from the documentary "The Finland Phenomenon": respect for the teacher in that country seems to have found the balance between blind obedience professed in the East and lack of consideration which is often observed in some western countries.
