Why do Finland's schools get the best results?

Summary:<p>1. Finnish parents read with their children. 2. Low immigration - so "Finnish as a second language" is not a problem there. 3. Education and educators are valued highly by Finnish culture. 4. And contrary to all our K-4 efforts, kids don't start school to 7.

Genetics?<p>The article doesn't even pause to consider the possibility that Finnish people, a small and relatively isolated population, might just happen to be, on average, genetically just a bit smarter than world population at large. While thinking about these things is horrendously unfashionable, it should be considered before we start assuming that we can replicate their success by copying their school system.

Culture.<p>The system is derived from their cultural values and works <i>because of</i> the cultural values. It's been shown again and again in educational studies: some systems are certainly better than others, but culture is <i>the</i> primary factor.

Notice that technology is not a critical part of their success. I didn't see a lot of shots of kids in front of computers, but rather, teachers and students interacting with each other. I work at a private school that has a similar philosophy, which contrasts with the other private schools in the area with which we compete. We're not interested in 1-1 laptop programs because we don't want devices getting in the way of personal relationships. Of the upper tier private schools in the area, we have the highest scores and the lowest tuition, and very good acceptance rates in top colleges. We invest in teachers who are well educated (all at least masters, several PhDs) and are happy (very high retention rate).<p>I don't mean to boast, but as technology director at this school, I'm always being asked about laptops, SmartBoards, and other cool and popular education technology things that we have decided not to use. I think it's important to carefully consider how technology can best be used, and to know when to stay with low-tech methods that work well.

One thing that shouldn't be forgotten in all the handwringing about the US educational system is that the US still has by far the best universities in the world. Whatever ranking system you look at, US universities dominate the top of the leagues table (along with a few foreign universities like Oxford, NUS and the Ecole Polytechnique). While there are many reasons for this, it seems like crummy performance in a few primary-school level tests certainly isn't crippling the entire education system.<p>For what it's worth, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranks the University of Helsinki as Finland's best university, in 108th place equal with UC Davis. Still a pretty impressive showing for such a small country; among the small (&#60;10m) countries only Israel, Ireland and Singapore have entries in the top one hundred.

I never thought these tests were fair comparisons. The United States has a lot more people than Finland and as a corollary the United States has to help a lot of people get through the educational process that are not as well off as the average citizen of Finland. In other words, we have a lot more ghettos than Finland and that hurts our aggregate scores.<p>A much more accurate test would be to find those of us in the United States that have been afforded the same living amenities as those living in Finland. I would bet that we are not far off at all.

Higher education in Finland is free, therefore education level is high. If I remember right, almost 60% of people have some kind of higher education, university or polytechnic. Education is valued here.<p>And it is also said that entrepreneurship is not that valued in Finland because of high education... Most of the grads want to work for big companies &#38; goverment positions.

perhaps delaying the mind-warping effects of school for a few extra years really helps.

A Finn here. I noticed a couple of mistakes there.<p>&#62; "Primary and secondary schooling is combined, so the pupils don't have to change schools at age 13. They avoid a potentially disruptive transition from one school to another."<p>This is exactly contrary to the truth. Nearly everyone does change schools at age 13 and it <i>is</i> disruptive.<p>"Teaching is a prestigious career in Finland. Teachers are highly valued and teaching standards are high."<p>Yeeaaah, I don't know. Most teachers (even comprehensive school) are MSc or BSc the very least. Their pay doesn't reflect that.<p>&#62; "Children in Finland only start main school at age seven. "<p>What?! You guys put your kids into schools earlier than that? But why?

One of the bigger factors that differentiate between average teachers and great teachers is the ability of great teachers to give a lot of personalized feedback to every student.<p>Also if other fields of learning like music, sports , computer programming and others, the importance of rapid personalized feedback to learning is very big.<p>"in virtually every lesson is the provision of an additional teacher who helps those who struggle in a particular subject"<p>There's a reasonable chance that the most of the advantage of the finish system comes from this method of teaching.

They may get the best results, but there are a lot of contributions to society that have come from less educated people.<p>A lot of great athletes, musicians, inventors, generals, etc, have come from societies where the average result is not so high.<p>Finland may have a high education level - but I could also make the claim that Finland is boring. If everyone gets educated the same, then everyone turns out the same and there is little diversity of thought.<p>So I really don't think the world should aim towards using the finish system.

People also say that Finish is fiendishly difficult to learn. Perhaps there's some ground in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity</a>

Let child <i>teach</i> the parent. I <i>pretend</i> that I don't know how to kick a soccer ball. And my 3 yr old child <i>teaches</i> me how to kick his soccer ball and how to play with his remaining toys.

There are 5 M inhabitants in Finland.<p>How much do they spend in their education system? Does it scale to a country of, say, 50 M inhabitants?

Better results in school measures what exactly?

"You are a product of your environment." --Clement Stone