When one thinks of school in the Nordic countries, one is immediately confronted with scenes of girls and boys playing in the trees and in the rain, with colorful boots and raincoats. Imagine classrooms full of buildings, spaces of all kinds converted into laboratories. And it would probably end up talking about the famous Finnish model. As did several European newspapers, which in recent weeks have cited Finland as a pedagogical example to follow.
Le Monde named it to describe Kiva, an anti-cyberbullying program created in 2006 by a Finnish university and used by twenty-one states around the world. The País, in its newsletter dedicated to schools, called it into question by reasoning about household spending on education: in 2018 in Spain it corresponded to 0.84 per cent of GDP, the second highest expenditure in the European Union. behind only the Netherlands, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). At the other end, notes the Spanish newspaper, was Finland, with 0.09 percent. Also the País on 29 November dedicated an article to the foresight of Finns on digital literacy. In a Helsinki school, ten-year-old pupils build robots in corridors, “create to-do lists online, on whatever platform they want, and freely decide what to work on,” says Marien Kadner. Two hundred kilometers further north, in another public school attended by a thousand high school students every day, computers in the classroom have replaced textbooks. Everyone has their own device, paid for by the state.
However, the Finnish model has also attracted criticism. David James, vice principal of a private school in London, attacked him severely in a text published in the British monthly The Critic in May 2021. “There are many educational idealists who dream of a land where children can be truly ‘creative’. , free from the constraints of antiquated disciplines, from all those ‘harmful’ relationships that try to rate skills and kill them in the bud ”, he writes. “These people imagine a place where learning is as collaborative as possible, hours are reduced, rules are agreed with students, responsibility abolished and homework banned.” For them the promised land is Finland: try typing “Finland” and “schools” into a search engine, James suggests provocatively, and you will see tons of enthusiastic articles. How did a relatively small country in the cold north get this fame?
The credit, or blame, is with the International Student Assessment Program (Pisa): in 2001, when the first project report came out, Finland was at the top of the rankings. And even though it went from A * to C- in 2013, and worsened further in the latest 2018 report, many continue to celebrate the myth. Behind this idealization, according to James, is Pasi Sahlberg, who in his latest book, In teachers we trust (we trust the teachers), reaffirms the belief that any national education policy is flawed, because it prevents teachers and students from realizing their potential. Sahlberg argues that to change schools we should rely less on policy-driven reforms and more on successful ideas that have worked in various contexts.
Is this also applicable to larger, more complex and diverse school systems? According to James no, and to demonstrate this he uses the example of Scotland. In 2010 Scotland drew inspiration from Finland for its Curriculum for excellence (Cfe), which establishes curricula and content for all school levels, from kindergarten to secondary. The aim was to promote child-centered learning and to put “experiences” at the center of the growth path. In 2009, Scottish teens were far ahead of their English peers in math and science, but in 2018 they had fallen significantly behind, James notes.
Sweden seen from Denmark
“At Christiansborg in Copenhagen as at Riksdagshuset in Stockholm, school tests and grades are the order of the day,” writes Tine Eiby in the Danish weekly Weekendavisen. The two parliaments have been discussing for months how to change the way students are evaluated, and the confrontation will continue for a while. In any case, the journalist reflects, it is incredible how two countries that are so close have education systems that are so far apart.
“On the Swedish side of the Øresund (the strait that divides the two states) you will find a tolerant school, centered on an idea of evaluation that follows the progress of the pupil. No tests of maturity or nerve-wracking oral tests. No external examiner. A school for everyone, from kindergarten to high school. Also for those who are not thinking of enrolling in university but want to focus on more practical subjects. On the Danish side, on the other hand, the primary and secondary schools, distinguished between high schools (gymnasiums) and professional institutes, constitute three separate worlds, each with its own set of values. Students are placed on different floors or ‘shelves’. This is the purpose of exams and external evaluators, already at the end of primary school “. In Sweden, someone has proposed to abolish negative votes altogether, because having boys and girls falling behind and getting lost is too high a cost to society; in Denmark a rating scale is used which includes more than one negative vote, one with the least in front.
To understand this distance, says Eiby, we need to look to the past. The Swedes eliminated the high school final test and external examiners in 1968: since then, teachers’ judgment has counted, and students only need to get a certain mark to prove that they have completed the school cycle. The architect of that change was Olof Palme, who before leading the Swedish government and social democrats, and before being assassinated in 1986, was minister of education. “Palme had a lot of radical ideas about how to get rid of the old and think new,” explains Christian Lundahl, who teaches educational sciences at the University of Örebro in Sweden. “Secondary education was linked to a class system and an antiquated culture. Therefore, to modernize the school, that culture had to be overcome ”. The concept of a school for everyone, a common school and curriculum for all students, had already existed for some years, but from Palme onwards this idea was carried forward in a rather radical way – from the Danish point of view: in 1970 secondary education was brought together in one system, becoming much more accessible. And another reform in 1994 made it easier for anyone, even those leaving a vocational school, to enter university.
The separate worlds of Danish education, on the other hand, date back to the nineteenth century, to the time of Nicolai Grundtvig and Johannes Madvig. The first, a religious and philosopher, theorized a primary school for all social classes, which united theory and practice: a school capable of “preparing pupils for life”. The second, a philologist and then a minister, laid the foundations for a secondary school based on the study of Latin and history, as well as on science. These two models continued to coexist, preventing Denmark from having a coherent school system.
Over the years, both the Swedish and Danish systems have shown their limits. If almost all boys and girls in Sweden decide to continue studying after the age of sixteen, that is, after compulsory school, doing another three years of high school, one in three takes longer than expected or drops out. It is also possible to discuss to what extent the Swedish school is really the same for everyone given the spread of private institutions, which in some areas dominate the educational offer, while the most disadvantaged neighborhoods rely on huge public structures, with more generic programs. On the other side of Øresund, 75 per cent of young Danes choose to continue studying after compulsory school: in high school some get lost on the street, even if less than their Swedish peers; in vocational schools, on the other hand, the dropout rate is close to 50 per cent.
To make things better, both Stockholm and Copenhagen are betting on votes. The Swedes want to review a system that is too permissive, which does not reflect the real abilities of the students and favors a sort of sell-off. The plan is to place more emphasis on the year-end grade and national test results. The Danes have just decided to bring the tests earlier this year, to make them a tool to help teachers develop programs. And they are thinking about how to change the evaluation criteria to ease the pressure on pupils a little. Sweden and Denmark will also be separated by a strait, but there is still a bridge connecting them, concludes Eiby.
Denmark seen from Norway
For a couple of years Ikast, a town of 23,000 inhabitants an hour from Århus, has hosted a new private school, Guldminen. In addition to being very expensive, this school also has another peculiarity: it is managed by the Football Club Midtjylland, one of the strongest football teams in Denmark. The goal is to breed super athletes. the future winner of the Golden Ball, the best handball player, and maybe even the future prime minister.
The school has ninety students, organized in seven classes, from six to thirteen years old. Two trainings a day are planned, but otherwise Guldminen follows the program of the other schools in the country, even if she applies experimental pedagogical methods. The requirement to be admitted is to be exceptionally good in sports, especially in ball games, as well as having a family willing to pay the equivalent of about five hundred euros per month of tuition. “It is as if Rosenborg or Bodø / Glimt opened their own primary school here in Norway”, reflects Margrethe Zacho Haarde in the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv. “It would be unthinkable”.
On one wall of the Guldminen canteen you immediately notice a writing in large pink letters: “You say I dream too big, I say you think too small”. Bjørn Holm, the school’s sports director, explains that the aim is to teach pupils to have good body control as soon as possible. “There are boys and girls who like challenges and who don’t give up easily”. The decisive factor is not so much talent, he adds, but the environment. “We work constantly to make the single child the best”. What if someone fails to improve? “Nobody gets kicked out of school, but I think a child who isn’t physically up to speed will end up making little progress,” concludes Holm. The many perplexed about this way of understanding learning summarize it as follows: if you want winners, you also need losers.
In Denmark, more than 18 per cent of children attend private primary school, which may also include admission criteria, such as an IQ test. In Norway, private schools have increased from 165 to 267 in the last ten years, involving nine per cent of total pupils. The state can financially support these schools if they fall within a recognized pedagogical direction, or if they incentivize growth in a particular field (such as science or art). In any case, no entry requirements are allowed.
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