Developing Finnish education system to create equality and to make the future

The basic idea of the Finnish education system is to provide all citizens equal opportunities to receive education despite age, domicile, sex, mother tongue and financial resources (Reinikainen, 2007). The development of the Finnish education system has occurred over a long period, and it has gone hand in hand with the development of the welfare state (Risku, 2014).

In the following video, the development of Finnish education system is considered in more detail. If you are interested in and need more information, please see article of Mikael Risku in the section Literature. 

Slides 17-19

Contemporary system

The present education system starts with early childhood education and care that is provided from infants to five-year old. The compulsory education starts with the one-year pre-primary education at the age of six. Some of these are attached to ECEC centres and some to comprehensive schools. The nine-year comprehensive education starts at the age of seven. The present government extended compulsory education to include general and vocational upper secondary education. Hence, compulsory education today starts at the age of six and ends at the age of 18, when people reach their legislative adulthood. There are no dead ends in the education system, and one can continue to higher education, to universities and universities of applied science, from both general and vocational upper secondary education. 

Slide 20

Developing Finnish education system for the future

Since the 1990s, the demographic, economic and ideological changes have challenged the Finnish society in ways for which we have not had pre-planned. We can find several changes that have been dramatically altering how we structure, lead, and provide education. The traditional structures have been crumbling down for novel ones How we cope with that? In the following video some solutions are presented.

Slides 21-22