From Russia with Love

I had a chance to host a group of Russian principals today at my school. Finnish furniture company Martela had brought 18 principals from Russia to visit Finland and asked me to host their stay in Finland.

We had a nice afternoon together. I thought they wanted me to show them around our new school but they had a million questions instead. What is the secret of the Finnish school system? How many hours a week an average child goes to school in Finland? What about homework? What is the average salary for a teacher in Finland? Why do Finnish people want to be teacher when they only get an average income? What about the budget for your school? How can you arrange only half of the class for some lessons? Does every child have the same teaching despite of the town or municipality he/she lives in? Do the teaching methods vary from 3rd grade to 6th grade? How can you teach pupils with special needs in the same class as everyone else?

Hard questions for anyone ;-) I tried my best to give proper answers. Then we made a small tour around the school. We saw a 6th grade doing their knitting and we saw a 1st grade playing a computer game about emotions with an interactive smartboard. We visited our gym that everyone thought was beautiful and we had a cup of Finnish Christmas speciality, glögi, and some ginger bread at the teachers' room.

After the visit I had most wonderful Russian presents. Russian hospitality is something that we are not used to in Finland. They are always carrying their little artcrafts and pins and all. We changed our business cards and then I walked them to their bus. Oh, how I wish I could make one day a trip to their town and see their schools. Looking forward to that.

New York, New York - what have you done?

While Finland still rules the world of education, according to the Pisa tests, without much of a student testing, United States (and many other countries as well) still believe in standardized tests. The latest news comes from New York.

According to the Wall Street Journal the state of New York has ordered to release student test data with teachers' names attached. New York officials obviously believe that the teachers can really make miracles. United States is among the countries where social disparity is one of the greatest in the western world. It is well known that where social disparity grows, the learning goes down. So, how can they compare the pupils of Fifth Avenue to the pupils of, say, Upper West Side or Bronx.

The much discussed Finland phenomenon is really about keeping all the pupils, the whole age group, at the same level of learning. There are really few, if any, drop outs in Finnish schools. That is the trick. Finland doesn't have all the greatest students in the world, but social disparity in Finland is really one of the lowest in the world and we want all the children to achieve good results.

So, how do we do that? For sure, not by putting the teachers to compete with each other. Nor do we put the pupils to compete with each other. We encourage the children to only compete with themselves. We want them to perform the best they can at their own level. We don't do standardized testing. We compare the pupil's results to their former results and encourage them to do better than the last time, not better than the person sitting next to you.

I hope, both for the pupils' and the teachers' sake, that the state of New York will re-evaluate their decision and instead of releasing the student test data and the teachers names - will release the students and their teachers from the standardized tests.

In case you want to learn more of the Finnish education system, you may want to check Finnish educator's and CIMO director Pasi Sahlberg's article Lessons from Finland.