Finland’s education system and how it became so successful

Culture&Arts Adina Camarasu
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Nine years of obligatory school, free education, highly qualified teachers, fewer topics but more practical activities and unconventional teaching methods.

It’s the short description of the education system in Finland of which effectiveness is recognized internationally.

The result of the international student assessment 2015 place Finland in fourth place worldwide. It’s a test carried out by the Organisation for Co-operation and Economic Development, which verifies not only the knowledge of students, but also their ability to use what they learn at school.

Politicians, school principals, teachers, academics … they all understand that, in fact, the only resource in Finland they should cherish is: the brain, the children and their education.

So, all these institutions focused on the same goal: to be able to offer the children the education that will enable them to compete on the international labor market.

With this clear idea in their mind, the Finns have managed to create one of the most performant educational systems, recognized and appreciated worldwide.

In short, the Finns rely on quality, not quantity, and experimentation on practice and less on theory and memory.

Children start school at seven years and the classes are ‘relaxed’. During the courses, the students do not have to stand up when they answer and can always ask questions to their teacher, who, by the way, is addressed by their first names.

Finns have understood the importance of interaction and relationship between teacher and student. Each child needs individual attention and, therefore, in a class are maximum 20 students.

‘The students learned about different energy sources, renewable and non-renewable during the second grade. After they learned about energy for several weeks, the teacher asked them to write a play in which to imagine that electricity was interrupted home. What may happen? Real life experiences, concepts and art, integrated into a single subject’, said Tony Wagner, Harvard professor.