Ei oppi ojaan kaada (education won’t knock you down in the ditch)
Finnish proverb
I always enjoy when reading a part of the Clever Lands about Finland education culture. How this Nordic country transform their education system becomes one of the best in the world are going to be discussed in the next few seconds. So, get ready to be inspired! By the way, if you don’t know this book yet, this is a book that telling you series of experiences and observations by the author when she was travelling around high performance countries in education.
Late tracking is their choice
Before 1947, all Finnish children needed to choose their type of school at age 10. The education tracks which available for them were university and vocational training. Imagine you are 10, you have to select one of those choices, and can’t change your mind later. This is called as two-tier system. How stressful it’d be considering so many college students feel they are in the wrong major. This motivated Finland’s government to make a change by delaying the education tracking by the age of 15-16. Students will get exactly same curriculum for 9 years in primary and secondary schools. Then after 16, teenager (not children anymore) can decide which tracks the belong to: gymnasium or vocational school. Gymnasium is equivalent to academic school or for who want to go to university afterwards, while vocational school prepares students to be job-ready straight after they graduate. This new system they call it as comprehensive system.
Finnish government aren’t magicians, they took the whole 32 years to fully implement the novel system. They started in 1947 by plenty (was said about 200 meetings) of discussions, debate and consensus-building. The adaptation of comprehensive system was commenced 16 years after (in 1963) only on some schools in the north of Finland, in region who needed the most at that time. Eventually, the complete implementation were done by 1979. What makes it so long? It was because the government took serious consideration, where the majority decision in voting doesn’t automatically make it a final call. They built deep reasoning why this system would give better future for their new generations. Of course, this long process wasn’t really liked from the perspective of politics who desires instant impact. Instead, they spent considerate time to find out what methods worked best for students form different backgrounds.
Are the impacts positive?
There are two key parameters to measure how effective is this brand new education system. First, equity means how students’ family background vary. Second, equality is how uniform the education outcomes or quality. This comprehensive system proves that equality was raised despite low equity. In other words, the new system was succesfull to narrow down the gap between the best and worst performers. Subsequently, a question arises: how does the new system narrow the gap, by escalating the worst or degrade the brightest? The study said that nothing has to be sacrificed with this system. The genius still do the same top performance as previously, while the low performers increase their bars.
A research was done by Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann about how late or early tracking affect equality in some countries. Long story short, inequalities raise in countries where early tracking were applied after primary school or before secondary school (as we can see together below). Most countries who applied late tracking (dotted line) were experiencing decline on inequality, such as the US, Canada, and Norway. Whereas some countries like Germany and France, who introduce early tracking experience higher inequalities in secondary school.
In fact, the late tracking or specialization (generally speaking) is also supported by the book Range by David Epstein to increase people performances. In this book, the idea of exploration across different things during early age will give benefit in the future. People will realize their strength better and be more creative while tackling an issue by knowing many perspectives.
Structure itself is not sufficient
Although the comprehensive education system has been applied structurally/formally, but it won’t be effective if these enabling factors weren’t play on the center stage. First, the culture and universal expectations should adjust accordingly. These two mean the society must have understanding, even in their unconsciousness, that smart children are not obligatory to enter universities or the less performed children don’t only entitle to attend the vocational training. This updated expectation is to be fostered among people to create strong root of the new system.
The second enabling factor should come from the main actor: the teacher. Perhaps, teachers used to teach students with similar family background in a classroom. Surely, it was always easier because same approach could be imposed to them. But, by deploying the new system, any students with various social background can be found in a single room. Hence, teachers should get used to the heterogeous environments and find a way to be the best to each student, not only to certain groups. Finland has conducted special training for this.
That’s it the brief story of an education transformation of a leading country in the world. Have you got any interesting thoughts? Let me know. I’ll never be bored to remind you reading this book to obtain the whole stories and many others from different countries/cities like Japan, Singapore, Canada, and Shanghai.
MW
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