A couple of weeks ago I got an email from old friend of mine. We have known each other since 2003. Comenius-project brought us together. My friend works in administration in city of Ioannina. She asked me if I could come to Ioannina and speak about finnish educationsystem in seminar for educators. It is a challenge to make a presentation and think how to limit the subject and pick up essential information of finnish education system. I decided to accept the invitation and started to prepare presentation for seminar. I am grateful for many persons who helped me. I got help and material from Martti Hellström and Harri Peltomäki.
Finlands Pisa-reputation is still very strong and it is reason why delegations want to come and see finnish school and finnish educators are asked to make presentations abroad. I have done presentations before in Scotland and Canada but mainly in the single schools. This time was different because people were also interested in curriculum and our new two years old curriculum still wakes up a lot of discussion in Finland.
In seminar there were also greek members of European parliament and they talked education and economics. Difficult combination at the moment ,there is a will to improve and make reform in education system but there is not money to start large reform. Other member of parliament told that he was very impressed of the speech president Niinistö held in Brussels talking about importance of lifelong learning.
In my presentation I wanted to point out that finnish education system can not be transferred or exported just like that. Education system contains always cultural context. The best country can do is to think ; what good we have in our system and what we can borrow, what works.
All the changes do not necessarily need money sometimes it is new thinking and new attitude.
Change is always challenge and small steps are often best steps in reforms. One of the best things in finnish education is that we do not lead reforms from top to down. We want to make reforms by asking opinion of the field. Goverments come and go but we want to keep our system ever since from 1972.
Evaluation was one of the topics which interested teachers. I had to convince that we do not rank schools or teachers. Support schools and teachers is our way to maintain quality. Greek has a lot of challenges and money is not the smallest .i respect teachers in Greek. It is possible that it takes 10-20 years to achieve a decent economy . Teachers believe in future and are positive, that is probably only way to survive.
My respect
