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Educational lessons for the Assembly


A wonderful article by Professor David Reynolds in today's Western Mail where he discusses the success of Finland in education.

It is worth reading in its entirity but I shall try and precis some of the more salient points:

  • Finland has a successful economy which offers schools very secure foundations on which to build
  • Finland is a predominantly rural country with small communities that both support and control their young people, and their families.
  • It has an extensive network of public libraries in all of its communities, and a high rate of book borrowing - the newly built library in Turku (pictured above) is amazing
  • Education in school starts late – at age seven – and is built upon high quality social outcomes acquired by children in what is near universal pre-school education, with no obsession with putting academic demands onto children at younger ages
  • Finnish primary schools are small, but generally not as small as those proposed for closure in Wales, and the secondary schools are also small with an average size of 300 to 400. Classes are generally mixed ability
  • Finnish education is relatively cheap since they spend less per pupil than the average for all countries in the OECD
  • The best explanation for their success is that they obsess about teachers and teaching.
  • Their teachers come mostly from the top 10% of the ability range and have status in their communities.
  • Their teacher training institutions often run “practice schools” so that teacher trainees are in touch with the classroom. They also have high quality continuing professional development that keeps them up to date with their subjects, together with numerous opportunities to improve their own practice through observing and interacting with colleagues.

As an avowed Finnophile, there is much we can learn from this amazing country.

As a visiting professor at the Turku School of Economics, it is a real pleasure to lecture Finnish university students not only because they interact better than any group of students I have taught, but because they place an enormous value on education.

There are certainly lessons to be learnt from the Finnish experience and if I were the Welsh Assembly Government, I would be on the Santa Express tomorrow to find out how w ecan emulate their success

Comments

Anonymous said…
snap - we have both picked up on this, but with two different aspects, interesting
December 13, 2007 11:21 am
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