Should we adopt the Finland education model?

lambert1

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Finland adopted a new model of education 30 years ago that focused on better teacher standards, smaller class sizes, better pre-school education, school education begins at age 7, no tests till age 16, abolishment of all private schools. Now Finland has one of the greatest education systems in the world consistently polling in the top 3 in contrast to the UK's pitiful decline.

So should we sit by and watch as our education system declines further and further whilst eastern European nations like Poland other take us or should we make a change and try to improve things?

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Skip_Snip

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Noo, the Tories will make sure the decline continues, for all except private schools

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Beebumble

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Whilst ideal it won't happen. There arn't enough teachers to have smaller class sizes and there's no way our government will even touch the subject of abolishing private schools.

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*Hakz*

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Most people would still prefer to get their education in the UK.

Nothing much wrong with the system.

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Antagonist_Love

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Make comprehensive education the forced norm? Are you serious?

Finland, and all of the "Stockholm School" nations, have ultra high tax rates. There budgeting model if applied to a country like the United Kingdom would be suicidal. As a serviced based economy were city is the money making center. Increase taxes and the country will break. The NHS is a painful burden as it is.

The debate about why comprehensive education works in some countries and not in others is interesting. Finns just have a completely different mentality.

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Ewan

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I don't really see how abolishing private schools is going to help public sector education.

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In2deep

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(Original post by Antagonist_Love)
Make comprehensive education the forced norm? Are you serious?

Finland, and all of the "Stockholm School" nations, have ultra high tax rates. There budgeting model if applied to a country like the United Kingdom would be suicidal. As a serviced based economy were city is the money making center. Increase taxes and the country will break. The NHS is a painful burden as it is.

Burden? I guess you don't appreciate what you have till it is gone :nopity:

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najinaji

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I think over-testing is one of the largest problems we face in our education system, so they have the right idea with that. Personally, I think state schools should be more inclined to follow the grammar/established public school model. It works well for them.

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Antagonist_Love

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(Original post by In2deep)
Burden? I guess you don't appreciate what you have till it is gone :nopity:

I've always seen nationalised health care as intrinsically amoral; that's my ethic. What's not up for debate is its economic burden. Every decade it eats up an extra 5% of government spending. Health now costs more than defense and education, something incomprehensible 50 years ago. Its days are numbered.

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prog2djent

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Ahhaaa, Non-scandanavian worship of "scandanavian models".

It's not as great as you think.

And also, something progressive's like to spout.

For the things finland has in regard to its education and its result, .... correlation ...... causality

There are MANY other factors that make the Fins especially gifted in engineering, physics/mathematics, which are the areas my neighbouring country are traditionally prided upon.

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Fynch101

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(Original post by Ewan)
I don't really see how abolishing private schools is going to help public sector education.

If someone could answer this properly, not just reply, I would be very interested.

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dangerdoyle

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(Original post by lambert1)
Finland adopted a new model of education 30 years ago that focused on better teacher standards, smaller class sizes, better pre-school education, school education begins at age 7, no tests till age 16, abolishment of all private schools. Now Finland has one of the greatest education systems in the world consistently polling in the top 3 in contrast to the UK's pitiful decline.

So should we sit by and watch as our education system declines further and further whilst eastern European nations like Poland other take us or should we make a change and try to improve things?

Well I don't know much about it but it sounds interesting, I did hear that Finland have very high rates of literacy.

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Jammyj12

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That would only work if tax's were increased massively and bring in private school children into the state sector would but an even greater stress on what is an apparently underfunded area, so there is always the chance that it would lead to a larger decrease in the standard of education in the state sector. Also I love my school and it's such a big part of my families history, as we have gone here for generations, if it was closed it would be like destiny a part of your history and family.

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FWIW and despite all the media tell you, There isn't much wrong with the education system here.

But waiting for the Tories to tamper with it........................

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TopHat

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(Original post by Fynch101)
If someone could answer this properly, not just reply, I would be very interested.

Helps eliminate sectional interests. A great deal of people with a great deal of influence simply don't care about the current state of the comprehensive system, because they don't have to go through it, and because their children won't have to go through it. They don't understand why the system is so damaging. If everyone goes through the comprehensive system, it is in everyone's interests to make sure the comprehensive system is as good as humanly possible. As it is, when much of the Cabinet (on both sides of the House) have been through private schools, their initial instinct will be to try and reward and encourage private schools, rather than public schools. Even if they do want to try and improve public schools, they won't have the same level of understanding as someone who has actually passed through the system.

Secondly, it stops the resource drain. Private schools can afford to pay teachers vastly higher salaries than they could expect from the comprehensive system. As such, all the highly skilled teachers leave the public sector to work for the private sector, making the quality of the comprehensive sector relatively worse than it would be should private schools not exist.

I'm not actually in favour of the abolishing private schools (a little undecided), but as I understand it those are the arguments which say that comprehensives would improve if private schools were banned.

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Psyk

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(Original post by Fynch101)
If someone could answer this properly, not just reply, I would be very interested.

If we abolished private schools, then the results of state schools would improve because the rich parents will pay for extra tuition for their children, hence pushing up the average results.

Of course that wouldn't actually mean education standards have improved, but people could use the statistics to make it look like it did.

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maitai

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I've been to both an English school and a Finnish school, I wouldn't say that either is better than the other. The only thing I will say that works in the favour of the Finnish schooling is that the class sizes tend to be much smaller - like you mentioned (The class I was in Finland had 15 students, yet the class in England had well over 30 students) which means there is more focus on individual students.

One thing I do have to say that is the way that languages are taught in the Finnish educational system is probably not the best and I find a lot of people's linguistic knowledge suffers because of this.

I think if you want to make an example of the educational system in Finland, you should focus on the way that mathematical and scientific subjects are taught because I think that is the strongest area.

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maitai

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(Original post by lambert1)
Finland adopted a new model of education 30 years ago that focused on better teacher standards, smaller class sizes, better pre-school education, school education begins at age 7, no tests till age 16, abolishment of all private schools. Now Finland has one of the greatest education systems in the world consistently polling in the top 3 in contrast to the UK's pitiful decline.

So should we sit by and watch as our education system declines further and further whilst eastern European nations like Poland other take us or should we make a change and try to improve things?

The 'no tests till age 16' is relatively misleading. There are tests, but there are no standardised examinations like GCSEs etc. until the end of Grade 9, which is the equivalent of the year right before Sixth Form/College in the UK.

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rosiesaurus

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There are a large number of children who by the age of 12 still can't read as well as children half their age-this is probably due to lack of interest and encouragement and pre-school teaching from parents, but delaying childrens entry to school could mean they never can be bothered to learn, and have the mindset many lower set children have, that school is a waste of time.

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maitai

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(Original post by rosiesaurus)
There are a large number of children who by the age of 12 still can't read as well as children half their age-this is probably due to lack of interest and encouragement and pre-school teaching from parents, but delaying childrens entry to school could mean they never can be bothered to learn, and have the mindset many lower set children have, that school is a waste of time.

I'm not sure if it was just my pre-school that I went to in Finland, but it was necessary to be able to read before you could go to school the following year. Which effectively eradicates the problem of not being able to read well, because the first year in school can then be used to develop the reading skills to a higher level.

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