The Finnish Paradox: Equitable Public Education Within a Competitive Market Economy

• In Event: Global Education Reform: How Privatization Versus Public Investment Influences Education Outcomes

Abstract

Beginning in 1970, Finland redesigned its education system with the overarching goal of creating a more highly-educated and equitable society, making strong investments in public education quality, as well as child health and welfare, including early childhood supports, for all children in all communities. Finnish leaders also typically cite their intentional social investment in training teachers to become education professionals as one of the driving forces behind their high achievement. As a result, and to the surprise of the international community, Finland’s scores on international achievement tests such as PISA has outpaced their peers in the OECD, with high performance levels that continue through more recent iterations. The international education research community has endeavored to uncover Finland’s keys to success.

This presentation builds on work from Finnish educators that describes the salient drivers of their system. In particular, they have focused on skills like critical thinking through learner-centered pedagogy and quality education by investing in the development of effective teachers, with the result of becoming a high achieving nation. Equally, Finland has resisted using the prevailing model of standardizing curricula to fit to international tests, even though they continue to have high levels of performance on these tests. To further the analysis, Table 1 lists each of the main approaches of the GERM alongside the different approaches that Finland has adopted over time.

Finland’s innovations in education fall into three main categories. First, Finland focuses on equity in education as opposed to the competitive “Race to the Top” approach found in the U.S., for example. Second, Finland invests heavily in its teacher labor force as mentioned above, preparing them well and granting them professional autonomy. Finally, Finland has learned from other countries, including the models of John Dewey and innovations such as cooperative learning, problem-based teaching and portfolio assessment.

To answer the broader question of this symposium, the Finnish school system was not infected by GERM due to a complex cocktail of intention, hard work, and good luck. The first two are described above, while the third occurred at the time of the first PISA results. They showed Finland’s high performance at a time when they were facing pressure from the business community, meaning that, in some sense, Finland was “saved by the PISA.” However, Finland required the public investment model to reach such high PISA levels and become a model of education worldwide.

Author

• Pasi Sahlberg, Harvard University