School in Finland: It’s all about togetherness

Innovative methods

Digital textbooks, robots as language teachers, and compulsory learning instead of compulsory schooling: Finnish schools do things differently than here in Germany. Two exciting radio reports explored the Finnish school system – and we listened in for you.

24. July 2019

Aktiver Unterricht in Gruppen - nach finnischem Vorbild?

On a first-name basis with the teachers

According to the latest World Happiness Report, the Finns are the happiest people in the world. When it comes to education, the Nordic country is also considered a role model – and not just because the PISA results of Finnish students are more impressive than those of German students. In Finland, the focus is on the learner, and the school is developed jointly by teachers, parents and students.

The peculiarities of Finnish schools are most evident at the structural level. This is also the subject of an interview with Marja Martikainer, a school development researcher from Helsinki, in a feature on SWR2.

“We try to do everything we can to bring everyone along,” is the thinking behind all structures, according to Martikainer. The school system has some exciting aspects, as she points out in the interview.

10 things that are special about the Finnish school system

From grades one to nine, all students attend the community school together. The students are not selected at the age of ten, as is the case in Germany, but only at the age of 15.
Teachers and students are on first name basis.
The focus is on the learner. Everyone should be able to keep up. For this reason, specially trained special education teachers are also employed in the schools. They are supportive in class and help weaker students.
There are school social workers and school psychologists at every school.
All Finnish textbooks are flexible and designed for collaborative teaching: They contain basic tasks and more advanced tasks. This allows faster students to continue working and slow learners to still keep up.

The image of the teacher: Teachers are very respected in Finland, many want to become teachers. So many, in fact, that only 10 percent of applicants are actually accepted into the teacher training program.
The national curriculum for teaching is very loose, it defines only general goals and core content, teachers are very autonomous and free to use and adapt it. You have the freedom of choosing your method. How they evaluate is also up to them.
There is no compulsory education but compulsory learning. Family travel outside of the holidays may be approved by the principal.
Education is not a state matter, it is a local matter.
The school is developed together - by teachers, students and their parents.

7 Core skills

Finland’s loosely defined curriculum targets seven core competencies, says Martikainer:

Learning to think and learning to learn
Cultural education, interaction and expression
Caring for one’s own needs, everyday skills and safety
Multiliteracy, literacy
ICT competence or digital literacy
Skills for working life and entrepreneurship
Participation, influence and responsibility for a sustainable future

These are to be fulfilled by teachers in their respective subjects, using methods of their choice.
The school development researcher concludes: “School is about togetherness. Everyone can do something and that should be encouraged, Martikainer said.

A jingle for the right answer

And what does it really look like in the classroom? Sometimes quite futuristic, it seems: Deutschlandfunk reports on how a robot is making it easier to learn vocabulary in Finnish classrooms.

Tablets and digital textbooks have long since made their way into Finnish schools – and now a humanoid robot is helping out in the language classroom. Elias is 56 cm tall and speaks 22 languages in addition to Finnish. When the answers are correct, he plays a musical jingle. He teaches adults who want to learn Finnish.

Learning is very effective because the robot only focuses on you, says one student. She believes that artificial intelligence should also find its place in the classroom.

For more stress-free learning?

Elias speaks without an accent, at a slow pace. He repeats what he says over and over again if the other person does not understand him. The robot is used not only in adult classes, but also in elementary school English classes.

Elias’ inventor, Johanna Hemminki, is convinced that the robot is a good addition to the language classroom. “Many people are afraid of making mistakes, and the robot takes away this fear because it does not judge, it does not punish. It is neutral. And that creates a sense of security in the learner, which is very important for learning success. Because when you feel safe, when you don’t have stress, you learn better.