N.B. As I was unable to attend the final session, this blog along with two others entitled Mind the Gap and The company words keep, replace the diario and dossier for Tema 7 & 8.
Learning through playing
Perhaps the biggest difference between Finland and other countries comes at the very beginning of the child's educational career. They don't formally start schooling until they are 7 years old and are not tested formally at all until well into their teens. This is in huge contrast to Spain and the UK where students at primary age are regularly tested. Rather than push very young children to learn how to read, write and do mathematics, the focus is on creative play. Academic prowess and competition is low on the agenda and children are encouraged to learn how to make friends and communicate, how to dress themselves and develop other social skills. Emphasis is placed on the “joy of learning”; before children can become effective learners they must learn to enjoy school and to develop as happy and responsible individuals.
Equality and Society
One key ingredient to the secret of Finland’s success is how society treats teachers. Teaching is considered as prestigious as (if not more than) medicine and law. Teachers are highly qualified and competition for jobs is fierce. They are also trusted and respected enough to be able to flourish and instigate real change and wield real power without government interference. They choose what and how they want to teach and only carry out assessments when they feel it is needed. Teachers performance isn't observed or graded but they are encouraged to reflect and develop professionally at meetings with senior management.
Finland goes against the grain of trends in many countries in it's attitude to equality. The concept of “good schools" or “bad schools" simply doesn't exist because they strive to make all schools “excellent schools”. Parents rarely fret about where to send their children because the local school is just as good as any of those in the area. Many countries, having seen the PISA results, have scrambled to emulate the success of Finland. What they fail to understand though is that it's not simply a question of how the school system works in isolation, but how the whole society interacts with it. Finland as a society has a lower wage gap between rich and poor and very low levels of child poverty. The society is also culturally very homogenous and so they don't face the same pressures to bridge the gaps that other countries face. Being a culturally and economically homogeneous society means that equality in the classroom is much easier to achieve. What’s more, as teachers and schools have such autonomy they are essentially impervious to political change and not beholden to the whims and agenda of governments.
Student Experience
Apart from the Finnish attitude to equality, another key aspect is how students are treated in the classroom. As mentioned previously, teachers carry out assessments when they feel it is needed and there are no mandatory exams until the age of 17- 19. Students have the least amount of class hours in the developed world and the least amount of homework but still end up the best. Class assessments are usually observations made by the teachers and have no impact on student progression and are used purely as formative assessment to help the student improve. Increasingly, the curriculum focus is moving away from traditional subject based model and students are instead encouraged to develop C21st skills such as digital skills, collaboration and research skills through project or phenomenon based learning. The argument is that, in life, knowledge is not sliced up into chunks and students must learn to take a holistic approach to life and learning. It's a persuasive argument and an approach that seeks to teach children to understand the world around them rather than pretending that facts and figures will prepare them for life.
Conclusion
It is clear that we can learn a lot from Finland and apply it to the Spanish system. It will, however, require a sea-change in attitudes of the society as a whole towards education. For me, the two most important are moving away from constant assessment and respecting teachers and their profession more.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar-schools-play-europe-top-education-system-finland-daycare
https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2017/aug/09/worlds-best-school-system-trust-teachers-education-finland
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39889523
https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/apr/09/finish-school-system
Dear Catherine, I have very much enjoyed reading through your posts! They are a nice summary of all the topics that we have covered so far. I particularly like the fact that you refer to the “joy of learning” as the key to the Finnish miracle. A lot has been said about the things that we (Spanish Education System) do wrong, and motivation is not an exception. But as a person coming from a different education system, do you think there is anything good that we already do? What are the good points that we could star building on to make progress? I would very much appreciate your feedback. Best, Doris.
ResponderEliminarHi Doris! Thank you for your comment! I think the Spanish system does a lot of good things really well! Obviously, the pluralistic attitude to languages is great - sadly in the UK there is an attitude that English is enough and it's not necessary to learn another language. This is very short-sighted in my opinion and will hold children back in the future. In one if my other posts I talked about how languages at primary level in Northern Ireland have been scrapped because of a lack of funding - not having languages at primary in Spain would now be unthinkable and I think that's the way it should be!
EliminarI also think that teachers in Spain have much greater autonomy when it comes to what they teach, building on the fact that in Finland the teachers are trusted enough to make decisions for their students I think it's a step in the right direction for Spain!