Regrettable Finnish fairy tales

A new brief from Cambridge Assessment addresses a series of misconceptions and misrepresentations about the education reform process in Finland. Though Finland's reforms are impressive, "myopia and elementary errors in enquiry" by foreign analysts have given rise to "Finnish fairy stories." The real story of Finland is subtle, challenging, and interesting, with the greatest insights gained from looking at history. The Finns effected wholesale, coherent system change. The moving of an entire system to fully comprehensive education required social consensus, policy, and meticulous, centralized implementation. Following Finland's emergence at the top of the first PISA survey in 2000, educational tourists to Finland asked about its system in 2001 -- not during the 1970s and '80s, when standards rose. At that time, policy formation and implementation in the system were distinctive, and very different from 2000. For instance, in the 1970s, Finland had highly centralized school inspection and testing, negating the "Finland has no national testing" misconception. The author draws attention to many other "fairy tales," and notes Finnish standards are no longer in the ascendant. Even in 2000, Finland was on a downward trajectory. The mistake has been considering PISA as a longitudinal rather than cross-sectional analysis. TIMSS, which takes a more curriculum-focused look at math and science, indicates a Finnish decline. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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