Education Project 2019: Seminar: Experience with Finnish Education System in Bratislava
The Embassy of Finland Prague decided to organize a seminar about the Finnish Education System in cooperation with Europe House in Bratislava and it took place on Thursday, November 28, 2019. Our main goal was to highlight the key values of the Finnish Education System: equality, equity, collaboration, trust and prioritizing of education. Finland serves as a good example and inspiration to the Slovak Republic, where Finnish Education System resembles to the highest quality.
The seminar was structured in two keynote presentations of Ms. Susanna Bäckman and Mr. Michal Pitín and one panel discussion of two Slovak and one Finnish speaker with experience of Finnish Education System.
Ms. Susanna Bäckman introduced Finnish Education System as such, described cooperation of schools with towns/town halls as being their providers and showed examples of new trends in Finnish Education. She underlined the importance of having a structure as in Finland where teachers can be heard and their ideas can turn to reality. Mr. Michal Pitín talked about his experience with Finnish Education from a perspective of a teacher and highlighted the idea that “Finnish Education System offers everyone the equal chance to become what he or she (hän) really wants to be.’’ Both keynote lectures were based on life experiences, same as the panel discussion. All the members of the panel discussion have their own life experience with Finnish Education System.
All the speakers agreed on importance of having trust and cooperation across all levels in education and described how that worked in Finnish Education System.
The seminar was well attended by guests from different fields and levels of all education sectors, ministries, diplomatic corps, journalists etc.
Our embassy also introduced Finnish companies involved in the field of education thanks to all materials provided by Education Finland (OPH).
Thanks to the media interest, there were two main articles in Slovak media so Finland gained nice visibility:
Forbes.sk(Odkaz na jinou webovou stránku.)
Slovak Spectator(Odkaz na jinou webovou stránku.)
Our main speakers at the seminar were:
Ambassador of Finland, Mr. Jukka Pesola
Expert on Finnish Education System, Ms. Susanna Bäckman
Administrative & Communication Assistant, Mr. Michal Pitín
Panelists:
Ms. Viera Grohová, Headmistress of Primary School in Poprad – Spojená škola Letná (“the southest Finnish school in Europe”)
Mr. Erich Mistrík, University professor and lecturer at the Faculty of Education in Bratislava and Oulu
Ms. Eerika Häninen, University student from Oulu, Future Class Teacher
For more information see our social media from 28 November 2019:
https://www.facebook.com/FinlandinSlovakia/(Odkaz na jinou webovou stránku.)
https://www.instagram.com/finlandinczechrepublic/(Odkaz na jinou webovou stránku.)