hi everyone senil regga consultant psychiatrist today I'll be talking about the Finnish education system and from my perspective why it might be the best in the world big difference is we don't compare schools that this is not good school this is bad school the whole term whole work is kind of obsolete it has been ranked number one in the world for quite a few years in fact 93% of fins graduate from academic or Vocational High School 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States States an
d 66% go on to higher education the highest rate in the European Union yet Finland spends about 30% less per student than the United States this is data from 2017 are you rich or poor or are you girl or boy we want to give equal opportunities for everyone I've spent 6 months in Finland where my children went to school and dayc carees I've got two girls one went to school the other one to daycare so eight and five and these were some of the insights from a practical perspective perspective but al
so looking at broadly how the Finnish system works so what might make the Finnish education system successful firstly teachers teachers in Finland are highly educated and respected professionals all the teachers they have master's degree from the University in Finland the profession has a high status in society and teachers are autonomous in their work we have highly trained teachers and we can actually give them many many tasks as their system the teaching system is based on trust rather than c
ontrol it takes 5 years of teacher education to become a teacher and only about one in 10 applicants to teacher education programs are accepted secondary teachers get a master's degree in the content area that they're going to be teaching all master's degree applicants or recipients have to write a research based dissertation so every one of us we have to have a master's degree and teachers are autonomous professionals with a great degree of professional freedom and they actually contribute to d
eveloping the curriculum as as well if you really want to be a teacher it can't be your second or third or I don't know what kind of option it has to be your first so it's not so much top down but really bottom up which is quite unique they decide on their own teaching methods teaching materials and student assessment most teachers also participate in joint decision- making when it comes to finish Educators as whole and what the priorities are they've looked at five key things firstly education
should be an instrument to balance out social inequality Finland as a whole really values and it's seen in daily life equality fairness trust and honesty Finland has been crowned number one on the un's happiness index report there are a lot of programs looking at balancing this out now of course it's a Nordic welfare state so education Social Security Etc all of these things are looked at very very closely so Healthcare is free education is free interestingly when it comes to homelessness Finlan
d has almost eradicated homelessness where numbers of homeless people are actually significantly decreasing and have been for several decades brought it down from say 20,000 to about 4,000 something because of its housing first principle quite fascinating in what they're trying to do to balance out social inequality next all students receive good quality School meals Finland school lunches are free really interesting because every time the kids came back home from daycare in school I used to ask
them you know what they had and we're looking at good healthy meals and this is such a core component because you can imagine if certain families can't provide it or if kids are hungry learning is affected to a great extent so this is a really really crucial component that I think makes a big difference to Children Of course parents parents don't have to think about okay what do I need to pack for the child this morning you know often parents have to get up and have to go to work sometimes scho
ol hours are really early as well so that puts a lot of pressure going to school becomes a stressful aspect which is taken out when the parents know that the children will receive good quality meals often have the meal and then often a snack as well which is healthy which is amazing next the ease of Access to Health Care as well so you actually have things like psychological counseling and healthare for children that is provided in school the student welfare team gathers on a weekly basis and su
bject teachers inform the group with different cases then might be bullying they might be skipping classes they might be learning difficulties they might behavioral problems all kinds of things so when we moved here both children were of course not fluent in Finnish so the school actually provided special language education to my daughter who was 8 years old for the for the younger one who was five it was a lot easier in in daycare because it's really focused on Creative play now they're both co
mpletely fluent in finish next let's look at the journey through school students start school when they're 7 years old later than many other places where it's probably 2 years before so interestingly in Australia my daughter's in grade three here she's in grade one and they're given free reign in developing childhood years and this is a core component to be able to develop their sort of individuality in Finland individuality highly respected and it's a great way for a child just to really be a c
hild in those initial years and the emphasis isn't on you know just mats reading or writing the focus is on Creative play so my 5-year-old goes to daycare and it was interesting because every time when she came home and I was I asked her about what she did her answer were we played but through the whole aspect she's reading she is able to do basic mats in fact additions of three digits four digits really well a number of things that she's learned and just practical aspect as well but when I aske
d her what she was doing it's all she would say we just played today which is really really fascinating so there aren't these sort of siloed aspects of okay we going to you know read or write or mats uh it was all happening through creative play they want to come here they want to have friends their skills are developing here social but also other skills now the country is applying the same child first thinking to paternity leave policies and I think this makes a big difference to neurodiverse c
hildren we know neurodiversity or ND refers to the variation in the human brain and cognition cognition linked to sociability learning attention mood and other mental functions term was coined by Judy singer along with the journalist Harvey Bloom neurodiversity is the concept that neurological differences among people should be recognized and respected and neurodiversity initially was kind of linked to children with sort of autism spectrum this really helps because what it does is it kind of bui
lds those basic foundations of creative play learning through play making it enjoy and actually allows as I said children to really be children and everyone's sort of equal doesn't matter how they're learning or what specific traits they have the second interesting thing with the journey through school is there's a lesser dichotomy on college educated versus trade school or working class in Finland the system is that there is the upper Secondary School which is a three-year program that prepares
students for the matriculation test that helps them get into University and this is based on the Specialties that they've acquired during their time and high high schools but they don't have to so at the end of grade n approximately when they're 15 to 16 they can just decide to go into vocational education which is a three-year program that trains students for other various careers you know hairdressing for example carpentry construction working those sorts of things so they don't have to go to
university but they have the option of taking that matriculation test if they want to then apply for University so there isn't this big divide in terms of you know sort of this trade school or college University which can psychologically sometimes create divides as to this is better than the other which we know in certain societies is present I can speak from an Indian perspective and now things have changed a lot but of course when I was doing medicine for example you know certain careers were
considered more valuable than others similar aspects are of course present in other societies as well for example there is the split private and public now in England I think the private schools are called public schools in Australia you've got private schools as private school where you pay for that education private schools don't exist in Finland in Finland schools are not allowed to raise private funds or to charge fees from parents all schools are equitably funded from taxation most childre
n attend their nearest public school and it's free so they don't pay for Education everything is free for the students actually we don't collect any money from the parents in fact for daycare there is a cap on maximum so it's about 250 a month you know when you compare it to say Australia is a lot lot lot lower and certain families can't afford that they receive it for free parents on low earnings know that they can't afford to put their children into child care so their children don't get all o
f the benefits that these children are having so free education for all which is absolutely crucial as they say equity and Excellence are inseparable it's a quote by passi salberg has done a lot of work he's written a lot of books on education he's finished he says the main finding is this there can be no National educational Excellence without stronger Equity of outcomes Australia should accept as many nations ackn knowledged a decade ago that equity and Excellence are inseparable what's surpri
sing is that there are still some people who refuse to accept that educational Equity is something to worry about a decade has passed since the gonsky review and its recommendations never fully implemented are now part of History the next interesting thing is education systems based on cooperation not competition there are no mandated standardized tests in Finland apart from one exam at the end of the student senior year in high school there are no rankings no comparisons or competition between
students schools or regions that's really amazing because growing up for children and Adolescence with there's already enough pressure in terms of comparison with social media amongst friends when one's building up self-esteem self-identity during those crucial phases and having that comparison obviously brings in this negative emotion of Envy low self-esteem low self-worth all of those aspects that can be extremely harmful to that developing brain and cognitions generally that help us adapt to
Future life so having no competition removes those negative emotions but most importantly helps the child and the Adolescent learn that cooperation all the techniques of cooperation the negotiation the communication that's so necessary to succeed in life in future so this is really really fascinating and I think salber quotes a line from a writer named Sami paronen which says that real winners do not compete next let's look at the structure of the school day interestingly schools begin much late
r and they've actively looked at that because sleep is such an important component particularly for children adolesence and we know Sleep Disorders getting inadequate sleep significantly impacts on attention concentration in children adolescence even in adults and is associated with poor learning the cumulative effect of it is quite significant schools start in between sort of 9 to 10 there may be a day where maybe it starts a little bit early class sizes tend to be smaller teacher to a children
ratios tend to be smaller so there's the ability to provide that greater Focus as well it's individual teachers who decide how the curriculum is taught in terms of homework they have sort of shorter periods of homework that I've sort of noticed when they come back they do their homework but it's really quick they learn a lot and there isn't that sort of pressure that makes homework unpleasant how many hours of homework did you get last night um about 10 minutes or something maybe 15 minutes or
20 minutes well if I would have done the homework I think it wouldn't be like 10 minutes tops so these are some of the insights that I found really really special about finish education that probably tell us why Finnish education system ranks at the top of the world if you do want sort of further information I think py solberg's blog is a great place to visit so here it is to get some more information but you know if your teachers watching it or mental health professionals watching it or just in
dividuals that are interested in education I'd love to hear your insights as to what you think about this video of course but also other insights about education and children and learning as a whole so I hope that you found this video useful if you liked it leave us a like and I look forward to seeing you in another video soon take care and stay safe bye-bye
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