Besides Marimekko, Nokia, Moomin, saunas and summers without darkness, Finland is also known for its excellence in education. In 1968, the northern European country went through a major educational reform. In the following decades, Finnish students consistently achieved the highest, or near highest, average results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa).
Children at a school playground in Finland.
The Finnish school system had never actually aimed to be the best in the world. Instead, the country has focused on learning rather than testing and on equality in access to education.
At the recent Educa annual congress for professional teacher development, Kirsti Westphalen, the ambassador of Finland, who was appointed here a little over a year ago, talked to Life about best practice in education reform and what Thailand could learn as we go through our own reforms.
A typical classroom in a public school in Finland.
Could you tell us about the school system in Finland?
Education is free from kindergarten to university. Everybody gets the same top quality education, irrespective of where you live. There's not a big variation between schools — only a 5% difference between the best performing school and the worst performing school. It's not the size of mommy and daddy's pocketbook that determines the kind of education you can get.
We have the academic track and the vocational track. Academic careers were always held in esteem, too much so that like in Thailand, you have graduates who don't have jobs. The vocational side is not valued as highly. These days, people who do well in vocational training are able to make good salaries, and they could go back to academic training if they so choose. There are no dead ends.
Is life-long education important?
Around 50% of the adult population is enrolled in some kind of adult training, from computer courses to foreign languages. On the metro, you see people looking at maths and science books. We value knowledge and we have a tradition of reading. Employers understand that a labour force that keeps up its own professional capabilities is a great asset. Employers are keen to have their own staff be engaged in re-training all the time.
What we've noticed when working with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) is that it is very important for teachers who have been teaching for five years or so to go back into in-service training because the world around them has changed.
What is the Finland educational model like?
It is different from the Asian school model, like those of South Korea and China, which pushes children very hard — lots of school work, long days, lots of mental pressure to do very well. We do not do testing. Our school days are shorter. We give very little homework and still we do very well. There is a focus on children learning several subjects at the same time in a group setting, with the teacher as a guide. It is much more important to develop 21st century skills where you can co-operate, communicate, be together, and be creative.
The teacher is able to see the strengths and weaknesses of a particular child, constructing an individual learning plan for the child in parent-teacher discussions. You don't compare yourself to others.
Ambassador of Finland Kirsti Westphalen.
What brought about the educational reform in 1968?
Finland was in a situation not dissimilar to Thailand of today. Politically, Finland was very divided. The political ideologies were very far apart, but the leaders were able to come together and decided that Finland, as a country far away up in the north, has to show that we are capable, or else no one is going to ask after us.
We neither have oil nor gas nor diamonds. What we have is human capital. It was decided that the way to make small, little Finland, with only 5.3 million people, successful in the global arena, is to develop our education system. We are very fortunate that this momentum has been maintained [for 40 years]. To reform education takes a generation. It takes a long time to bring about changes that you can see.
So how did Finland go about it?
It's important that whatever one does in the area of education is based on facts, that you don't throw good money after bad money. Thailand uses a huge share of its own GDP in education. It is larger than what is used in Germany. You would think that money as such would give results, but that's not necessarily the case. So it's very important to truly study what gives results and what doesn't.
In Finland, we try to approach education in a very scientific manner. The one thing that has been giving results is that we've invested in teachers. For a country, nothing is more important than its own children. Nothing is more important to the children than their own parents and families, but next to that, it certainly is the teachers. Investing in professional training for teaching education, so that even kindergarten teachers have a master's degree, is worthwhile.
The profession of a teacher is highly valued in Finland. You become either a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher. They don't make quite the same money as doctors and lawyers, but they make good money. And it is very difficult. Only one out of 10 gets into teacher training because it is such an esteemed profession. If one values the performance then the pay should reflect that.
A typical classroom in a public school in Finland
How were the reforms implemented?
Not everything changed at once. Everything was geared from the top down in 1968. As performance improved, the Ministry of Education was able to delegate power to regional and local levels. I know that power structures within the education system in Thailand are being discussed. With the BMA, we have been working on in-service training for teachers and school administrators to raise the level of proficiency so that in the advent of reforms, these people will have more responsibility and the decision-making would happen much closer by.
Educational gaps are a major problem in Thailand. Do you see any factor in Finland's education reform that could be applied here?
You can't impose the Finland model onto Thailand or anywhere else but we can learn from one another.
Finland has been a very homogeneous country. This has changed over the past 20 years, with the increase in migrants. Children who do not speak Finnish or Swedish as their mother tongue are at a disadvantage. The schools where extra support is needed are allocated more money to compensate for the fact that you might need an additional teacher in the class or you need to have extra language classes for the children.
Instead of having tension in society, one has to make sure that no part of the population, original Finns or the new Finnish people with diverse backgrounds, are discriminated in any way, that people are treated equally, in workplaces, everywhere. Our experience has been that having children of various backgrounds, from rich families, from poor families, in the same schools create a much more creative atmosphere.
What is the main lesson Thailand could learn from Finland?
Thailand should move ahead wisely with policies that have been tested and have produced results, before launching this way and then that way. You could do that in fashion. Fashion changes every few months. You cannot do that in education if you wish to have sustainable results.
