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Finland has no private schools – and its pupils perform better than British children

inews.co.uk Finland has no private schools – and its pupils perform better than British children

Finland ranked seventh in the world in OECD's student assessment chart in 2018, well above the UK and the United States, where there is a mix of private and state education

Finland has no private schools – and its pupils perform better than British children

Finland ranked seventh in the world in OECD's student assessment chart in 2018, well above the UK and the United States, where there is a mix of private and state education

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  • Finland's schools are really good for a number of reasons, I'm not sure that private vs public is the only reason worth attributing it to, although i understand the context of the article makes it especially relevant.

    For example, Finland provides three years of maternity leave and subsidized day care to parents, and preschool for all 5-year-olds, where the emphasis is on play and socializing. The state subsidizes parents, paying per month for every child until age 17. 97%* of 6-year-olds attend public preschool, where children begin some academics. Schools provide food, medical care, counseling and taxi service if needed. Stu­dent health care is free.

    (* a decade ago, not sure if numbers and strategies are still accurate, I lifted it from a Smithsonian article from 2011 because I couldn't remember specifics. Please correct me Suomi friends)

    • When you don't allow rich people with the most resources to create special areas for their precious babies to get ahead, they suddenly care about funding public education ... from which the rest of that stuff you mentioned flows.

      People need to realize that if the rich are boarding a different ship than you, they're actively sinking yours for profit.

      • I totally agree with public education and not funding private schools with public money - I'm not a fan of segregation. I also don't think that's its necessary to ban private schools before implementing other helpful policies, like maternity leave or health care. My point is more that these things all combine to create good public education rather than pointing at just one part and suggesting it is the fix. I think ignoring the other components leads to disappointment when the single-solution proposals fail to deliver the expected results.

        To be totally real, I also wanted to tell people what specific things they can ask their elected officials for in their own communities as a way of achieving more equitable outcomes globally. There's no reason not to copy Finland's homework. Except that Finland doesn't set homework.

        Edit: clarification

      • Article 7 of the German constitution:

        (4) The right to establish private schools shall be guaranteed. Private schools that serve as alternatives to state schools shall require the approval of the state and shall be subject to the laws of the Länder. Such approval shall be given when private schools are not inferior to the state schools in terms of their educational aims, their facilities or the professional training of their teaching staff and when segregation of pupils according to the means of their parents will not be encouraged thereby. Approval shall be withheld if the economic and legal position of the teaching staff is not adequately assured.
        (5) A private elementary school shall be approved only if the education authority finds that it serves a special educational interest or if, on the application of parents or guardians, it is to be established as a denominational or interdenominational school or as a school based on a particular philosophy and no state elementary school of that type exists in the municipality.

        (Emphasis mine). Private schools over here are generally either confessional, follow different pedagogic approaches (e.g. Waldorf, Sudbury) or, last but not least, serve a national minority, e.g. there's plenty of Danish schools in northern Schleswig-Holstein which are, legally, private schools but teach to the Danish curriculum (in Danish) while making sure that kids also get German graduation papers. And yes they generally all receive state funds. Can't find proper numbers right now but ballpark 75 to 85% of what public schools get per student.

        • Weird fact: In 1875, Karl Marx ripped what became the SDAP (which eventually through mergers and name changes became the SDP) a new one when they argued for state-provided education, and argued that rather than people getting an education from the state, "the state has need, on the contrary, of a very stern education by the people" (Critique of the Gotha Programme)

          In the same section he argued that the then-US model of private or locally run education to publicly set standards was far preferable.

          Of course, this was at a time when the German/Prussian government was deeply authoritarian, something Marx and his family had experienced first-hand, so I'm sure that coloured his views of state-run education.

          • State provided education is ancient in Germany, though, but implementation was spotty. Luther (yes that one) called for universal education in 1524, calling for six hours a day school for boys and one for girls, all learning to read and write and the boys maths and physics and stuff (the girls would be taught home economics at home). Pfalz-Zweibrücken were the first to introduce universal and mandatory public education for both girls and boys in 1592, not just in Germany but the world. There had been separate curricula for boys and girls until 1970, alas they largely threw out much very useful stuff in the unification process. Like home economics. But I digress.

            As said though implementation was spotty (and way worse in Catholic areas than Lutheran ones), there initially also was resistance from the population, but it took up speed after enlightenment. In 1816 Prussian statistics said 60% of kids attended school, raising to 82% in 1846. This is approximately the context that SDAP demand is to be understood in: They wanted proper universal education, seeing the difference it made. It doesn't really matter where you learn to read and write, it's still learning where to read and write. Universal secondary and higher education were still way off by then.

            All in all this is rather rich coming from Marx, himself very much part of the educated elite: He studied law at university, whereas a significant portion of workers didn't even visit primary. Engels, you know, the bourgeois fat cat, actually had a way better grasp on the Lumpen than Marx: His family was pietist and as such he spent his childhood years visiting a public (not private) school and playing with worker kids, despite his elevated socio-economic status.

            Which actually brings me to another particularity of the German system: Visiting a school is mandatory. There's been cases of US-influenced fundamental Christians wanting to homeschool because "public schools teach witchcraft" (you know the type), every court they appealed to didn't give a rat's arse about the parents opinion but ruled that the kid has a right to attend school and be exposed to the majority population, even if that's to learn to valiantly stand firm in the subculture their parents want them to be part of. They ultimately seeked asylum in the US, where they're a playball of the culture war there -- they could've just moved to, say, Austria, and wouldn't now face deportation.

            • Thanks for the interesting overview.

              To be honest, I mostly like dragging that quote out because it confounds people's expectations.

              Marx certainly wasn't arguing against universal provisioning of education - that had been a demand in the Communist Manifesto for example - but against state control of the curriculum, which really must be understood in large part I suspect as a direct outcome of his own personal experience with the Prussian government repression before he left, and fear it'd end up used for government propaganda, rather than any kind of objective assessment of quality.

              But that was very much a product of a very specific time, and quite possibly personal resentments mixed in. I suspect had he seen the relative state of the US and German education systems today, he'd certainly have preferred the German model.

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