Politics
An industrial top down management approach still besets the UK education system, from both left and right and fails another generation. We have the Academy system, the system of inspection, testing, starting school at 5, league tables, competition for schools and places to the point parents move into postcodes that connects them to better schools – driving the cost of housing up. It just seems to point to years of stress and waste for all concerned.
A broader package than just education: Pasi pointed to the fact that it requires a broader more subtle and complex package of things that delivers a good education system. He pointed particularly to happiness and wellbeing as a caveat.
Finnish society as a whole is based upon more egalitarian, humanistic and mutual values than we have in Britain and it is part of the Finnish DNA. Finland has no private schools or private healthcare as we would know it. In fact private schools were abolished in 1970, and it is illegal to charge for fee-paying tuition that leads to a qualification. It is also illegal to stream children by ability. I might add Finland is a social democracy – it has a high taxation system, but this model is designed for well-managed wealth re-distribution. We won’t be going there any time soon.
There is also no such thing as special needs. Pasi pointed to the fact that 30% of the children have some kind of extra support – but this is NOT identified as special needs. It is necessary extra help and is supplied for as long as the child needs it. This I would argue in complete contrast to the UK. We have to say our kids are special, they then often get streamed ‘corralled’ into the special needs classes. The legal costs to get a ‘Statement of Special Need’ for dyslexia for example is £15,000 as the LEA’s will fight to ensure the child is not officially recognised as having a special need, as they then do not have to provide resource in the same way required by law. These children suffer a certain subtle pervasive and ongoing prejudice, which will further
50 entrepreneurcountry
erode their self confidence – I should know I have seen it happen to both my sons in the state education system. Equity needs quality: Equity however does not deliver quality, so the key elements here are [1] infrastructure, [2] leadership [3] assessment [4] curriculum.
The school and the
child needs good infrastructure, the teachers need to be able to lead well, assessment is not made by inspection and the curriculum is geared towards the skills, abilities and the passion of the child. Quality is also achieved, consistently by not pitching schools against each other, in the experience of Finnish education. Higher quality is achieved when the standards are self directed and that comes down to an evolved sense of professionalism and a personal desire to teach well and to be given the trust to do that.
Another point made by Pasi is that less is more, and less teaching time leads to a better quality education. Finnish Teachers spend 60 minutes each day less than their UK counterparts and 120 minutes less than US teachers. There is also less homework and more play – the consensus is work is done during the day as well as children and teachers taking a collective responsibility. Teaching and teachers in Finland are highly respected and there are high demands on the people that want to teach, they perceive their role as professional as a doctor or a lawyer, and such is the standard that many primary school teachers could easily have followed that path. But they followed their calling. Furthermore, the academic standards are high, but it is not enough. Another question carries great weight, what is your personal quest that leads you to teaching? So the profession for the last 20 years has been oversubscribed even though these people have qualifications to take them into law, medicine and other professions?
There is also no school inspectorate. The really hard work of quality over long periods has as much to do with a rigorous selection process, in the understated way that only a Finn could deliver. Pasi observed ‘we have no need for such top down control as we
trust we have the very best people and they know what needs to be done.’
Britain did get a pat on the back for the teaching of maths and science but this is not the whole system’s design work or thinking. My Finnish friends do feel that their system is good but that it needs work to become more rounded and that British schools offer children interpersonal skills that the Finns could learn from. However, as Pasi observed, there are no bad/failing schools in Finland in the way we would describe them here, and that is something we could learn from. The Finnish system is first and foremost designed to be effective and efficiency comes as a natural consequence. However, its key performance indicators speak for themselves; well educated, well balanced (on the whole), multilingual children that top the OECD table, whilst we languish. My question is, are we capable of planning and designing a long-term view of education that is not based upon an industrial model of command and control, a life- sapping tourniquet of bureaucracy and management speak that could deliver true and valuable education to our children?
The female centaur statue that stands outside Vaasa University, Finland
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60