The Finnish approach

Another article irritatingly ruined by the BBC's penchant for one-sentence paragraphs.

Aaaargh.

When will the madness end ?

While children in England and Wales are still toiling away in school into the middle of July, the Finns have already been on holiday for six weeks, in a summer break that lasts 10 to 11 weeks. And completing this picture of less is more, Finnish children do not in theory have to start school until they are seven - although most will have been in classes from an earlier age. But when it comes to the international Pisa tests, Finland is in sixth place and the UK is 23rd in reading; and Finland is 12th and the UK is 26th in maths.

There is little homework, compared with UK schools, and there is no culture of extra private tuition. A key concept in the Finnish school system, says Mr Tuominen, is "trust". Parents trust schools to make the right decisions and to deliver a good education within the school day - and schools put trust in the quality of their teachers.

Teaching is a high-status job in Finland and teachers are accorded a great deal of professional independence. It's a different philosophy from the system in England, says Mr Tuominen, which he sees as being built around a check-list of tests, league tables, targets and public accountability.

But before making any assumptions that the laid-back Finnish approach must be the way forward, you could just as easily look to the educational hot houses of Singapore or South Korea. Their children also do better than those in UK schools, but with an entirely different cultural approach, based on long hours and relentless pressure.

I would also point out the UK is miles ahead in terms of higher education, while South Korea has a suicide rate four times higher than the UK (and the Finnish rate is slightly more than twice the British rate).

"In Finland there's a long-term approach to education policy that means plans remain in place for a significant amount of time, giving them a chance to work," he says. "In England the opposite is true. The government is constantly tinkering with policy and there's an obsession with structure - such as grammar schools and academies - rather than a focus on evidence."

The OECD's education director, Andreas Schleicher, says extra hours are linked to better results. "You teach one hour of science more per week and you will see that reflected in higher average scores," he says. But that doesn't mean it's going to be enough to catch up - because countries such as Finland, he says, can "deliver greater value in learning in fewer hours".

There's also bad news on the homework front. Even if the Finns don't need it, research suggests it makes a positive difference. Prof Susan Hallam from the Institute of Education says there is "hard evidence" that homework really does improve how well pupils achieve. "There is no question about that," she says. A study for the Department for Education found students who did two to three hours of homework per night were almost 10 times more likely to achieve five good GCSEs than those who did no homework.

Saku Tuominen, director of this HundrEd project, says parents in Finland don't really want longer hours in school. He says there is a "holistic" approach to education, with parents wanting a family-friendly approach.

So this article mentions a bunch of interesting facts, but doesn't really tie them together to answer its own question : how is Finnish primary education delivering better results per hour of teaching than British education ? I suppose it's nice to point out than the Finnish system is more holistic and less self-centred than the British idea that personal success in work must be put ahead of family life (e.g. longer summer holidays would be extremely difficult in the UK), but what is it, specifically, in those teaching hours that makes the Finns better ?
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005