Finland Finally Surpasses Sweden As Having Best Education System

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Finland Overview  :cheers:
When the first PISA results became public, and Finland topped the league tables, no one was more surprised than the Finns.  Long in the shadow of the Swedes, the Finns had no idea that they might finish first.  Some thought it might be a fluke.  But they have been among the leaders ever since.  A steady stream of researchers and educators have been trekking to Finland to see if they can divine the Finnish secrets of success.  The Ministry has had to create a unit devoted solely to helping foreigners interested in learning about their system.

Right after the Second World War, Finland was largely a land of woodcutters and agriculturalists.  Finland’s education system and student achievement at that time were unremarkable.

In the early 1990s, Finland was forced to completely re-think its economic strategy. An overheated economy combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a major trading partner, to produce a precipitous decline in GDP and an unemployment rate of 20%, higher than in the Great Depression.  Following this cataclysm, Finland applied for entrance into the European Union and began to move away from its traditional export strategies. The government decided to funnel resources into the development of the telecommunications sector, hoping to reinvent Finland as a global telecommunications capital. Nokia took on a leadership role in developing this industry. By 2003, 22 of every 1000 Finnish workers were involved in the research and development sector, a figure almost three times higher than the OECD average, and more than four times higher than in Finland in 1991.  The Finnish economy had undergone a major transformation.

The education system was able to respond to the workforce needs created by the events of the early 90s because of a series of extensive reforms that had begun in 1972, which had changed the face of teaching and learning in Finland.  These began with creation of a unified comprehensive education structure and national curriculum guidelines. Accompanying the restructuring of schools was a restructuring of teacher education, with responsibility for teacher training moving to Finland’s universities, where Finland’s other most valued professional had long been trained. Other measures were also aimed at improving the quality of the Finnish teaching force.  Over time, mathematics, science and technology all took on greater importance in Finnish curricula, as did higher-order thinking skills like problem-solving, teamwork, creativity and interdisciplinary studies.  These reforms and others, described in more detail in other sections on Finland on this site, made Finland’s economic survival in the 1990s possible.

Now, Finland is counted among the world’s high technology leaders, with a very modern economy centered on the telecommunications, consumer electronics, forest products and metals industries.