Finland's Education System

Education is such an important part of the development of a country’s youth. Canada is recognized around the world as having a strong public education system. Another country that consistently performs well is Finland. In the article “5 Days in Finland,” Colleen Ireland actively searches for reasons that make Finland so successful on the educational playing field. The author visits Espoo, Finland in order to observe the school system, learn about the curriculum practices and question administrators and teachers to get an idea of how things work, and why Finland’s PISA scores are so high. Ireland highlights some of the key differences between education in Finland and Canada and hopes to learn strategies that the Ontario education system could adopt so that schools in Canada could better serve their students.

A few noteworthy differences include the structure of schooling, the number of students in schools, and the unions. Ireland highlights the fact that all education, even university in Finland is free, and that all schools in Finland have the same bell schedule so that students can take courses at different schools if they are not offered in their own school. Schools also implement cross-curricular planning and have longer units of study, although it is not specified in the article how long each unit is exactly.

Ireland notes that Students in Finland attend Comprehensive School from grade 1-9, followed by Upper Secondary for grade 10-12. She lets us know that the schools are generally under 500 students but leaves out the class sizes which is an important factor when considering the general makeup of a school. The article describes the unions in detail, stating that principals have their own union, and are also apart of the voluntary teachers’ union where 96% of teachers join. Another noteworthy difference in Finland’s public schools is that every student in Comprehensive School receives a free lunch.

Another important difference where Canada seems to have the more progressive set-up is special education. In Finland, students with special needs are segregated but Ireland states that “consistent support exists.” It would be helpful to have a more detailed description of the accommodations and ‘support’ that is provided to students with special needs. The Ministry of Education and Culture Website does note that ‘the maximum number of pupils permitted in special needs teaching groups is laid down in legislation.’ This website also informed me of the Finnish National Matriculation Examination, which students complete at the end of upper secondary school. This exam comprises at least four test, one is ‘the mother tongue exam’ and the other three exams are selected by students.

Because the article was posted in the OSSTF Education Forum, the audience of the article would be teachers, administrators, bargaining unit members, and other adults interested in educational reform. As a District and Teachers Bargaining Unit president, Ireland is heavily invested in these topics and outlines many good facts about Finland’s education system while mostly avoiding bias. However, the fact that “Finland’s success seems to be a strong belief in teachers and their competence” (Ireland 35) is an idea that gains extra attention by the author. She highlights the fact that teachers in Finland do not have Teacher Performance Appraisals and says this is because ‘there is an inherent and absolute trust’ that teachers are competent when in reality, the lack of teacher appraisals could be for a number of reasons. Perhaps the fact that principals choose and hire the teachers that work in their school has something to do with this. There is a strong possibility that principals do more frequent, informal check-ins of how teachers are doing. This would be more feasible in Finland than Canada because, as Ireland states from her visit “none of the schools I visited had a student population over 500” (Ireland 32). This means that there would be less teachers within one school, making it easier for the principal to check into the teachers’ classes. So while there is no official Teacher Performance Appraisals, that does not necessarily mean that the effectiveness of teachers within Finnish schools is not monitored.

So while this article does a good job at highlighting some of the differences between Canada’s and Finland’s education system, more detail and clarification would be beneficial to the audience. Ireland does make her point known that placing trust in teachers seems to lead to more successful schools. This article also succeed in piquing interest in the coming result for the 2018 PISA which are due to be released on December 3rd, 2019.

Works Cited
Finland, Ministry of Education and Culture. “Universities Act.” Universities Act, 2009,
www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/kaannokset/2009/en20090558.pdf.
Ireland, Colleen. “5 Days in Finland.” 5 Days in Finland, 2012,
lms.brocku.ca/access/content/group/4343392c-2826-4496-8b78-56c88a68ac2f/Five_days_in_Finland.pdf.
OECD, PISA. “Data - PISA.” OECD, 2018, www.oecd.org/pisa/data/.
University, Eastern Finland. “Why Is Education Free in Finland.” UEF, 2019,
www.uef.fi/web/mns/tuition-and-scholarships/why-is-education-free-in-finland.