If you thought you knew everything about the remarkable transformation of Finland's schools from mediocre to one of the top performing school systems in the world, think again. Native Finn Pasi Sahlberg (educator, researcher, advisor on global education reform, and Director General of CIMO in Helsinki, Finland), who has lived and closely studied this remarkable reformation, tells the full story in his newly released book, Finnish Lessons -- What can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Sahlberg shows how the Finnish ways of improving schools differ from the global educational reform movement and from the North American educational policies and reform strategies. It's a wake-up call for all countries around the world who aspire to achieve excellence.
This week in The Global Search for Education, Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish school Principal Martti Hellström, the enchanting students of the Aurora School in the city of Espoo and I share some Finnish lessons with a unique look inside the 5th grade classroom of a typical Finnish primary school.
"The Aurora School," Pasi explains to me, "serves its community by integrating all pupils in normal classes without segregation or selection of pupils based on their characteristics. The school emphasizes leadership and shared responsibility of teaching all children so that their different talents and abilities are respected. This school is noteworthy in that it utilizes in a representative way the local autonomy that the current legislation offers to schools." The answers to my questions below are based on Pasi's conversation with Aurora School Principal Martti Hellstrom:
What are the backgrounds of these pupils? What is the diversity (racial and socio-economic) within the class?
Pupils come from the Lippajarvi neighborhood of the city of Espoo. It is a typical suburban district of the city. Some parents have a relatively high level of wealth. However, most children live in an average middle class family. Some live in lower income homes. In this school, about one tenth of the pupils have an immigrant background family. That is less than many other schools in Espoo. Some schools have over a quarter of the children coming from an immigrant background.
How long is the school day?
The school day starts between 8 and 9am in the morning and finishes between 1 and 2pm in the afternoon. The class has 25 lessons a week. Each lesson is 45 minutes long. There are 3 hours and 45 minutes of instruction each day on average. In the Aurora school this class (5th grade) has one four-lesson day, one six-lesson day and the other days are five lessons long.
Does the school provide a meal service and is it free for any of the students?
The school serves a healthy, tasty, warm lunch each day for all pupils. The school meal has been free of charge for all children in Finland since 1943.
What percentage of the children read at their grade level or higher?
In Finland, we don't categorize children according to their reading skills. In each class we have children with varying abilities and talents. So does this class in the Aurora School. Teaching is adjusted to serve the different abilities in the classroom.
What percentage of the children can do math at their grade level or higher?
In Finland, we monitor pupils' learning achievement at the national level only using sample-based tests. We don't have data available that would allow us to answer that question. In our city, we know that our pupils, on average, are a little bit above the national average based on these sample-based tests. The Aurora School has been in the sample and the school has performed at a good level in the city of Espoo.
How much homework do the children get each night?
The role of homework in Finnish schools has continuously become less important. Pupils do their learning assignments mostly during the school day so that they can spend time with their own activities at home. According to our surveys, Finnish pupils in basic education spend less than one hour per day doing homework.
Do these children take a standardized test during the school year?
Standardized tests are not used in Finland like they are used, say, in the United States. Instead, we follow pupils' progress with school-made summative and diagnostic assessments in order to find out which children need more help than others to be successful.
How does the teacher assess the student's work each term?
Pupils are given two report cards each school year. In grades 1 through 4, the reporting is based on a description of the pupil's strengths and all the areas which need more development. In Grades 5 and 6, progress is assessed using grades of 4 to 10. Assessment is based on teacher-made tests or tasks, and so-called continuous performance of pupils.
Is the curriculum centralized or teacher driven?
Finland has a three-tier curriculum system. The framework and broad principles are defined at the central government level. Based on this national framework curriculum, municipalities then design their local policies for curricula. Normally, the concrete curriculum work takes place at the level of schools according to the municipal guidelines. Today, the flexibility at the level of schools is a little less than it used to be in the 1990's.
How much music and art (all the art forms) are there in the curriculum?
Fifth grade pupils have 25 lessons a week. Nine lessons of the 25 weekly lessons are arts, music, craft work and sports.
Are the teachers happy with the quality of the school's facilities?
At the moment, the Aurora School facilities are good based on the average national level. However, Aurora was built in 1957 and its annex in 1982. The school awaits a long-promised renovation. It should begin in 2014.
What is the starting salary of a teacher? What is the upper end of the range?
A newly appointed teacher receives about 2300 euro a month (or about $40,000 per year before taxes). The tax rate in that salary category is about 25-30%. At the upper end of the range, the salary is 3400 euro a month (or about $59,000). This is their basic salary. They can actually earn more than this depending on their additional duties within the school.
What qualifications do the teachers have?
All teachers have a master's degree from a Finnish University. (Note: Only Finland's best and most committed teachers make it into the profession due to its popularity and the intense competition to become a teacher. Each year, many of the most talented and motivated students submit applications but only about 1 out of every 10 will be accepted into primary schools. The total annual Finnish applicants, in all the five categories of teacher education programs, number about 20,000.)
What parental involvement is there in the school?
Parents participate in many different ways. Each class has its own PTA. The basis of these PTA's in the Aurora School is the Home and School Association (Koti ja Koulu Yhdistys). The school board of the Aurora School decides on the most important things. Most of the board members are parents of the pupils in Aurora. Some of these parents also voluntarily assist teachers during the school day.
This video was made by the pupils of the Aurora School. It's about "Siesta" i.e. the 75 minute recess each day of the week when students can do whatever they want to. Many do music or sports or go to rehearse theater or simply do their "homework."
The "Siesta" video by the children of the Aurora School
In The Global Search for Education, join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Leon Botstein (US), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (US), Dr. Madhav Chavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (US), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Professor Ben Levin (Canada), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon, Dr. David Shaffer (US), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (US), Yves Theze (Lycee Francais US), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (US), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page.
Images courtesy of Pasi Sahlberg and the Aurora School.
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C. M. Rubin: The Global Search for Education: The 20%
I am from FInland.. I am now 62 yrs old. I am one of those utterly poor kids after the devastating WW2.
Though we were penniless, I got the same schooling as the few richer ones. I do not know how the people did it at that time to provide all this for their kids. As it is said later on, in Finland people think that an education is an investment for the future.. future pension payers. In Finland we still do not have very very rich people.. if you walk along the beautiful Esplanadi Avenue in the center of Helsinki, you do not encounter any luxury shops selling clothes for astronomical prices.. No, we do not have that. What we have are: free health system, free schooling system, free universities. We have a lot of problems as any other nation have.. but I guess the taxing system and equality between men and women as well as kids and all races is helping when trying to form a healthier society.
This is the most telling point. In Finland, teachers are admired and respected. It's considered more important to be a teacher than to be a professional athlete or an actor. Priorities in this country are seriously screwed up.
These are all things that could easily be taken into consideration in our schools.
Teachers can still discipline students. Kids know this and class time is not wasted on the disrespectful little darlings we see here.
Studies show that people concentrate for 45 minutes. After that rates decline and learning becomes inefficient. Children are given outdoor recess every 45 minutes. Kids are expected to dress for the weather: rain, shine, hot, cold. And they can dress themselves. There is no doubt that fresh air and exercise help alleviate behavioral issues as well.
Finnish students are excellent at memorizing and regurgitating facts, but don’t always know what to do with them. It’s very easy to trip up someone by asking ‘now what?.’ I completely freaked out my classrooms by stepping outside of the textbook and asking them to perform exercises that used their knowledge.
I have dozens of reasons why I don’t like the system, but would like to share some of the reasons why I do:
The children spent copious amounts of time working independently in workbooks. The classroom was quiet and blackboards were usually clean. I once heard a teacher tell a student “Are you stupid? Go back to your desk and do it again!”
Grades were the subjective result of one teacher. Two students who answered the same could easily have discrepancies in grades and decisions, since they were based on one person’s opinion were absolute. I never did figure out how one word answers or multiple choice could be subjective.
Who cares about standardized testing or assessments? The point is to discover each child's unique strengths and areas needing work and then to give them what they need to succeed. And also to let children be children by giving them lots of free time unburdened by useless and pointless homework. I love the idea that school ends at 2pm. Then children can play. I'm sure the Finnish system has aftercare to give the children a safe place to play until their parents can pick them up after work.
Maybe we as a society should look to systems that work instead of following some theoretical fad every 20 years or so.
We had art, music and theater. There were some sports, but not as many choices as the school I teach in now.
I can't remember any homework until I was in my last years of high school. We had a "study hall" during the school day to do extra classwork, but I often worked in the library or office. Lots of kids had jobs in the school (unpaid) that were an honor to have. The plum one was to work at the reception desk.
Teachers were hugely respected and it took a retirement or death to get a teaching job. I know people that waited for years for openings and then only the best were hired.
When kids graduated they were fully functional and ready to go to work or college and many went on to top ranked universities.
Where did we go wrong? Sometime in the 90's American education went off it's freakin' nut. I'm a teacher and I can place the tipping point with NCLB and standardized testing.
My students are in school from 8:30 to 4pm with a 45 minute lunch. There is no down time in the day. By the last period, their brains are fried. One of the problems of being constantly stimulated (be it by computers, TV or yammering teachers) is that it becomes hard to concentrate and pay attention when it counts.