Why Finland’s schools leave ours in the dust

Move it: Children in Finnish schools are encouraged to sit less in the classroom. The science says that a child who moves and plays is a child who learns, according to the writer. — Filepic/ The Star

WHEN politicians wring their hands over “global competitiveness” in education, the solution, they always seem to insist, is to crack the whip harder. They are looking in the wrong direction. If you want to see the most successful education system in the world, you don’t go to the rote-learning factories of East Asia. You go north. You go to Finland.

Finnish students don’t start formal school until age seven. They have the shortest school hours in the developed world, roughly 20 hours a week, compared with over 30 in the United States. They take 15-minute outdoor breaks for every 45 minutes of instruction. Homework is minimal – often less than 30 minutes a night.

And for over two decades, Finland has consistently ranked among the top three nations in the Pisa (Programme for Inter-national Student Assessment) tests, excelling not just in reading and science, but in the kind of creative, collaborative problem- solving that algorithms can’t replicate.

Finland’s secret sauce? It’s a philosophy. In Finland, education rests on a single, radical pillar: trust.

First, they trust their teachers. Teaching is one of the most prestigious careers in the country, on par with doctors or lawyers. Every teacher must earn a master’s degree – fully paid for by the state.

And there are no national standardised tests until the very end of secondary school. No principals obsessing over “value-added” data. No scripted lessons from a central bureaucracy. Finnish teachers are treated as professionals, given autonomy to design their own assessments and adapt lessons to the child in front of them.

Second, they trust the children. The system has no gifted programmes, and no “tracking”. They practice what they call “inclusive education” – a student who struggles is not a problem to be removed from the classroom, he/she is a challenge to be met with special educators, smaller groups, and more time.

The goal is not to produce the highest test score for the few. It is to produce the highest average for the many. And they succeed: Finland’s achievement gap between the richest and poorest students is the smallest in the Western world.

How do we replicate it? Stop reducing education to a data point. You cannot measure curiosity, resilience, or the ability to work with others on a Scantron sheet.

Pay teachers like the knowledge workers they are. Give them master’s degrees on the public dime. And then – here’s the scary part – get out of their way.

In Finland, first years spend more time on arts, crafts, physical education, and “free play” than they do on formal maths. Neuro-science backs this: a child who moves and plays is a child who learns.

Critics will whine: “Finland is small, homogeneous, and wealthy.” It’s a tired excuse. Finland was a poor, agrarian nation 60 years ago. And it transformed itself through radical policies, not demographics. More-over, the second and third most successful education systems, in Canada and Estonia, prove the model works in diverse, large, or post-Soviet contexts as well.

The most successful education system in the world didn’t get there by demanding more. It got there by demanding better – better trained adults, better respect for childhood, and a better definition of success.

Until we are brave enough to trust our teachers and stop treating our children like future GDP units, we will remain stuck in the industrial-reform model of education.

We will keep cranking the lever, adding more tests, more hours, more stress. And Finland will keep quietly, successfully, letting its seven-year-olds play in the snow. The choice is ours. But the evidence is not ambiguous.

PROF DATUK DR AHMAD IBRAHIM

Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies

UCSI University

Adjunct professor

Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies

Universiti Malaya