What’s special about Finland?
Since it implemented huge education reforms 40 years ago, Finland’s school system has consistently come at the top of the international rankings for education systems.
So how do they do it?
It’s simple — by going against the test-driven, centralised model that much of the Western world uses.
Pasi Sahlberg is a Finnish educator and scholar. He is the former director general at the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation (CIMO) at the Finnish Ministry of Education and is now Visiting Professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Education. His book Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland won the 2013 Grawemeyer Award.
I met with Pasi Sahlberg as part of my research for Learning {Re}imagined and asked him what was so special about the education system in Finland. Here is an excerpt from our conversation.
Graham Brown-Martin is the founder of Learning Without Frontiers (LWF), a global think tank that brought together renowned educators, technologists and creatives to share provocative and challenging ideas about the future of learning. He left LWF in 2013 to pursue new programmes and ideas to transform the way we learn, teach and live. His book, Learning {Re}imagined was recently published by Bloomsbury/WISE and is available now.
