Finland are ditching subjects

Wow! Finland / Scandanavia. Why do people wet themselves when they hear Finaland? Education is like music. Fashion. Everything is a fad that will be changed every five years.
England had the same idea with progressive Comprehensive schools in the 1970s. (See Dominic Sandbrook 'Seasons in the Sun P. 193 -196) In Creighton, north London, school rules were a page long, no prefects, no exams, few punishments. At the end of the year many teachers handed in their notice, citing chronic bad behaviour, indifference to work etc.

Scandinavian society is different to Irish society. Education policies should be tailored to suit the location, not just a civil servant going, 'Hey it works here, let's do away with out Junior Cert system to save some cash'.

Right, I get that Finland scores high on PISA scores and all that craic but we are constantly being told here by the powers that be that when we aren't copying Finland (and really copying 1980s/90s UK), we should be trying to develop STEM subjects and employment and research opportunities in these areas. Again a lot of our education system is driven by what the multinationals want.

Having said all that if the Finnish system is supposed to be the best in the world, and they possibly don't have the same influx of American MNCs due to English not being the first language, why isn't their education system translating to major research or Finnish businesses competing on the world stage? I know pretty much next to nothing about the Finnish economy but the only Finnish company I can name is Nokia. On the other hand I can name plenty from their Swedish neighbours: Volvo, Saab, Ericsson, Electrolux, H&M, Scania, IKEA. Why aren't we talking about how successful Sweden is, so they must be doing something right in their education system?

It's not the be all and end all to have a successful economy but I would imagine that with a highly educated workforce that it would translate to large and successful industries at some level.



Also while they keep banging on about how wonderful Finland is the OECD report from 2013 http://www.oecd.org/edu/Finland_EAG2013%20Country%20Note.pdf

says that 39% of their population (25-64) has a third level degree.

The corresponding Irish report https://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Statistics/Education-at-a-Glance-OECD-Indicators-2013-Key-Facts.pdf

shows that in Ireland for the same cohort 38% of the population have a third level degree. So we're pretty much neck and neck there. Both over the OECD average of 32%.

Comparing both reports, it goes on to say that 85% of Finns (25-64) have upper secondary education (I presume LC equivalent) where as only 73% of Irish do. It also highlights the lack of second level education in the over 50s in Ireland, which is relatively high. Unsurprising given that free second level education only came in in 1967. So again, we're not doing badly here and our percentage population which has a third level education will rise year on year for the 25-64 age group. It also suggests that more of our LC students go on to third level than theirs. So do Finns go to school have this wonderful education we keep hearing about, and then not follow on from there?

Also we've had mass emigration in the last few years http://emn.ie/emn/statistics

probably on average 40,000 of Irish nationality per year over the last 7 years compared to an average of about 15,000 Finns.

Given our mass emigration in the last 7-8 years (mainly in the 20-35 age group, many of whom hold a third level qualification) I don't think we're doing too bad.


P.S. That same document shows the pupil teacher ratio in Finland to be 13:1 where as ours is 20:1


It also shows teacher hours for 2011 to be:
Lower secondary education 595 hours
Upper secondary education 553 hours

I'm presuming they are similar to Americans with junior high/ high school type set up.

Irish teachers : 33 weeks x 22 hours = 726 hours class contact time.

We don't have it as cushy as our Finnish counterparts, but I can't see Jan mentioning any of these facts when she's trying to ram through JCSA. I think I would be far more open to correcting my own work if I had 13 in a class and approximately 8 weeks of class contact time knocked off my teaching year to bring me into line with the Finnish education system.



Just to drag the arse out of the Finland v Sweden analogy up above, given that education just doesn't revolve around science, technology, business, how many famous Finns can you name versus Swedes? I had a think about this and came up with:

Generally from the world of Art/Sport/Music/Literature/Entertainment/Technology

List of Finns

The Rasmus
HIM
Mika Hakkinen
Kimi Raikkonen
Linus Torsvalds (he of Linux fame)
Pavo Nurmi
Sami Hyypia

I'm fairly stuck to be honest. Without Formula 1 and Finnish metal bands that list would be even more pathetic.


List of Swedes:


ABBA
The Cardigans
Roxette
Ingrid Bergman
Noomi Rapace
Stellan Skarsgard
Henning Mankell
Stieg Larsson
Henrik Ibsen
Hans Rausing (the tetra pak buck)
Ace of Base
Swedish House Mafia
Avicii
In Flames
The Hives
Carl Linnaeus
Alfred Nobel
Minecraft
Arrhenius (for all you chemistry teachers!!)
Bjorn Borg
Carolina Kluft
Stefan Edberg
Zlatan Ibramovich
Henrik Larsson and a million other Swedish footballers I can't be arsed listing
Sven Goran Eriksson
The Bridge, Wallander and Sebastian Bergman for everyone who watches foreign imports BBC4


To me Sweden as an example seems better represented in most fields. I struggle to name Finns in general across any field yet we are told their system is the best. Why?

ViveLaVie wrote: »

Surely that counts for something though?

Well it does, but our wonderful government only pick and choose pieces of other education systems to implement, usually the low cost parts, instead of looking at the bigger picture and seeing why things work overall in other countries.

Maybe our scores would be higher if we had a pupil teacher ratio of 13:1 instead of 20:1. Ignoring all other things that could be implemented I suspect that if we had far smaller classes and were able to give students more attention that it would be beneficial to the students. As it is a PTR of 20:1 realistically means in a lot of schools that there are classes of 30 in core subjects and non practical subjects.

Take for example a school of 400 students who are currently entitled to 20 whole time teachers under the current PTR. Ignore any allocations for special needs etc as they are individual to schools. Imagine if our PTR was reduced to 13:1 like Finland. That same school of 400 would now have 30.77 teachers. Almost 11 extra teachers on full hours!! Imagine how beneficial that would be for reducing class sizes across the board, being able to offer a wide range of subjects, being able to divide up core subjects into smaller classes so students get more attention and be in a class suited to their level. More individual attention for each child in a classroom.....

In my school we have a small first year group of maybe 62-63. Languages are compulsory, the choice is French or German. Traditionally French was more popular and a few years back that would have been two French, one German class with roughly 20 in each. This year we have 1 French, 1 German with approx 30 in each and the language teachers have commented that when they are teaching new vocabulary they just don't have enough time in class to get each student to pronounce the words individually, there are simply too many.

Teacher0101 wrote: »

A few bad experiences, leave being teacher, Mammy and Daddy fund a PhD in Education and knock out the odd paper slagging the system from the ivory tower. In order to keep yourself relevant and eventually get to be the head of your Department while you sit in a quiet office on their third skinny latte of the day.

Sadly, what's going on now is precisely the opposite: the academics in Education departments in Irish universities are conspicuous by their refusal to offer any critical assessment of Irish government education policy. Can you think of a single education academic in an Irish university who has openly criticised Irish government education policy since 2009? I can't.

In my PDE year there was slightly under 250 students. Their fees amounted to @ €1.5 million in income for the university's School of Education that year alone. Many, if not most, of these PDE students did not get a permanent job in the first five years after qualification. Everybody knew the employment system was dire. Yet, in our "smart economy" the universities' Schools of Education were, and are, allowed by their ultimate funder the Irish government to continue running the cash cow of PDE students producing a massive surplus in teachers for whom no jobs exist in this state. These Education departments owe the Irish government hugely for not curtailing their money-making racket (which has recently been extended to 2 years of fees - thank you very much). Tenure-track or not, you will not get to department head unless you appreciate the finances, and thus politics, of your university's School of Education. This, more than anything else, explains why academics specialising in education are refusing to speak up about how Irish government education policy is not following best international practice (to put it mildly).

According to the OECD/PISA results from 2012 the Irish school system is at no. 20 in the world in maths, no. 14 at science, and no. 7 at reading. Yet, our heroic government wants us to accept "reforms" from a country which is doing significantly worse than us in all three of these areas - a country whose school system ironically puts massive store in league tables and rankings such as PISA.

Ah "reform" Fine Gael-Labour style, with the little-known meaning of "to disimprove something by introducing changes". We are led by donkeys.