As a call to action, “Let’s imitate Finland” is unlikely to stir many hearts. Yet, for some critics of Australian schooling, it’s a rallying cry. To them, Finland is an educational nirvana with high paid teachers delivering excellent outcomes despite short school hours, an aversion to homework, the absence of external assessments and no annoying school league tables.
If Australia would only ditch NAPLAN (our external assessment program), erase the My School website (which contains information about school performance), shorten the school day and forget about homework (and pay teachers more, of course), we could become an educational powerhouse — just like Finland.
Ironically, the reason that critics choose Finland as a model is because it performs well on external standardised tests. Specifically, Finland scored highly on tests conducted by the OECD’s international Program for International Student Assessment, widely known as PISA.
As Jennifer Buckingham notes, Finland is an unlikely model for Australia. Its entire population is not much larger than Sydney’s. It has little cultural or racial diversity, few disadvantaged schools and a widely shared social consensus about what children should learn and how they should be taught. In other words, Finland is very different from Australia. In addition, its PISA status is slipping. In 2012 (the latest scores available), Finland did not make it into the top 10.
Today’s top PISA performers are all Asian — Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Macau, and Japan. Like Finland, these places are culturally homogenous, but this is where the similarity ends. In most other ways, their educational cultures are the opposite of Finland’s. They have long school days, lots of homework, rigorous national assessments, public accountability and plenty of competition among schools.
Predictably, educators are now urging us to emulate Asia. This is no more sensible than imitating Finland. We can learn from other places, but we cannot just impose their ways on our much more diverse population. Our students deserve an educational system designed specifically for Australian students, schools, and culture.
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Finnish Fantasies
If Australia would only ditch NAPLAN (our external assessment program), erase the My School website (which contains information about school performance), shorten the school day and forget about homework (and pay teachers more, of course), we could become an educational powerhouse — just like Finland.
Ironically, the reason that critics choose Finland as a model is because it performs well on external standardised tests. Specifically, Finland scored highly on tests conducted by the OECD’s international Program for International Student Assessment, widely known as PISA.
As Jennifer Buckingham notes, Finland is an unlikely model for Australia. Its entire population is not much larger than Sydney’s. It has little cultural or racial diversity, few disadvantaged schools and a widely shared social consensus about what children should learn and how they should be taught. In other words, Finland is very different from Australia. In addition, its PISA status is slipping. In 2012 (the latest scores available), Finland did not make it into the top 10.
Today’s top PISA performers are all Asian — Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Macau, and Japan. Like Finland, these places are culturally homogenous, but this is where the similarity ends. In most other ways, their educational cultures are the opposite of Finland’s. They have long school days, lots of homework, rigorous national assessments, public accountability and plenty of competition among schools.
Predictably, educators are now urging us to emulate Asia. This is no more sensible than imitating Finland. We can learn from other places, but we cannot just impose their ways on our much more diverse population. Our students deserve an educational system designed specifically for Australian students, schools, and culture.
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