The speech of Mr. Markku Linna, Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Education The importance of education and training for the development and competitiveness of a country. The role of government in R&D policy

It is a great pleasure for me to discuss the Finnish education and R &D policy with you today. Occasions like this help to increase mutual understanding between our two countries and paves way for further educational and research cooperation.

The Finnish school system does not have any separate pre-schools, but pre-school teaching is provided at schools and day care centres. Pre-school teaching means education provided in the year before children start comprehensive school. The aim is to improve children's capacity for learning. In practice, children are taught new facts and new skills through play. There is legislation which requires all municipalities to provide pre-school teaching free of charge to all children aged six, but participation in such teaching is voluntary. Most six-year-olds now go to pre-school.

Compulsory education in Finland really starts with comprehensive school, which generally starts in the year children turn seven. Comprehensive school is a nine-year system providing education for all children of compulsory school age. Comprehensive school lasts for nine years and ends once a young person has completed the curriculum of the comprehensive school or when ten years have passed since the start of their compulsory education. There is also an optional 10th grade for those pupils who want to better their marks or want to spend an additional year before making their study choices at the upper secondary level.

Post-comprehensive school education is given by general upper secondary schools and vocational schools. About 90 per cent of pupils leaving comprehensive school continue their studies at the upper secondary school or at vocational schools directly.

The upper secondary schools offer a three-year general education curriculum, at the end of which the pupil takes the national matriculation examination, which is the general eligibility criterion for higher education.

The general upper secondary school network covers the entire country. The schools follow a national core curriculum, but recently the range of choice has been widened. Individual schools can cultivate a more distinct image; some upper secondaries have a specialized curriculum, giving emphasis to the arts or some other field. Upper secondary school has traditionally constituted the main channel to university education.

Finnish vocational education and training is institution-based to a very large extent. Taught courses form the core of the programmes. In order to create closer cooperation between vocational education and training and the world of work, efforts are being made to increase the proportion of apprenticeship training to some 10 % of all entrants.

Upper secondary vocational education covers some 75 qualifications. The study programmes take three years to complete. They are designed for comprehensive school leavers and lead to basic vocational qualifications. All three-year study programmes provide eligibility for higher education. Recently, a 6-month period of on-the-job-training has been introduced to all programmes. In Finland, vocational programmes include a considerable amount of general studies, too, such as languages and mathematics.

The Finnish higher education system is made up of two parallel sectors: universities and polytechnics. All universities are based on the philosophy of the unity of teaching and research. Their basic purpose is to perform scientific research and to provide higher education based on it. Students at universities may take a lower (Bachelor's) or higher (Master's) academic degree and scientific postgraduate education, consisting of licentiate and doctoral degree. As adult education, universities also arrange continuing professional education and open university teaching.

The polytechnics are usually regional higher education institutions which provide instruction in 8 fields with a professional emphasis. There are universities and polytechnics all over Finland, and the ultimate aim is to ensure that all prospective students have equal opportunities for study, regardless of where they live.

There are altogether 29 polytechnics. Most of these institutions are multifield establishments. The polytechnics provide instruction in the following sectors: technology and transport, business and administration, health and social services, culture, tourism, catering and institutional management, natural resources, the humanities and education. Degrees have a professional emphasis and take between 3.5 and 4 years to complete. In addition to theoretical studies, polytechnic degrees also require practical training in the workplace and a diploma project.

There are 20 universities in Finland, ten of which are multifaculty institutions and ten specialist institutions. Of the specialist institutions three are universities of technology, three schools of economics and business administration, and the remaining four are art academies. In addition, university-Ievel education is provided at a military academy under the Ministry of Defence. All universities engage in both education and research and have the right to award doctorates. The first university degree, which roughly corresponds to a Bachelor's, can generally be attained in three years of full-time study and the higher, Master's degree in five years, i.e. additional two years after the Bachelor's degree. The university degree system has recently been renewed on the basis of the Bologna agreement. There is also an optional pre-doctoral postgraduate degree of licentiate, which can be completed in two years of full-time study after the Master's degree. Full-time studies for a doctorate take approximately four years following the Master's degree. About 10 per cent of graduates at master-Ievel enter doctoral studies.

Adult education, which is designed for the entire working-age population, has expanded rapidly in the past few years. General adult education is provided by independent sponsoring organizations and evening schools. Vocational adult education is given by all vocational institutions and, specifically, by vocational adult education centres. Adult education at universities comprises continuing professional education and open university courses. Each university has a centre for continuing education. Adult education is not totally free of charge unlike degree-oriented education. Usually the fees are still very modest, though, even in adult education.

I would like to present how the Finnish education policy works in practice: how the reforms are planned, and how we ensure successful implementation of the reforms. I will use the PISA survey as an illustration of the results we have gained in our education policy.

As you probably know, Finland did very well in the OECD PISA survey. PISA is a three- year survey of the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 32 OECD countries. PISA assessed not only how well pupils mastered their school curriculum, but also how well they could actually use their knowledge and skills in real-Iife situations. At the same time, information was also collected on students' attitudes and approaches to learning.

In PISA, Finland showed the highest reading literacy performance in the whole OECD. Our 15-year-olds did significantly better than students in any other participating country. What is important also is that in Finland, the students' socio-economic background seems to have hardly any effect on the learning outcomes. The even quality of our education system is illustrated by the fact that the number of poor readers in Finland is remarkably lower than in any other country. With these achievements in mind, it was somewhat surprising to find out that there are noticable differences between boys and girls in our system, girls were much better readers according to PISA results.

In mathematical literacy, Finland performed well, too. We were among the top four countries. Again, the standard deviation in mathematical skills was the smallest in Finland. This means that there are no major differences between schools in different areas or between pupils from different socio-economic classes. The proportion of weak performers is the lowest in Finland in the whole OECD also in this test.

Our pupils did well also in scientific literacy which was tested in three science areas. And again we can say that student performance in scientific literacy varied less than in most of the other countries. Interestingly, Korea and Finland seem to be the two countries which have best managed to combine high levels of scientific literacy with low disparities in performance. And as was the case in reading and mathematical literacy, even the least proficient Finnish students, in international comparison, did relatively well in scientific literacy. Finnish top performers scored, however, lower than the best performing students in Japan, UK and New Zealand.

So to sum it up: Finnish 15-year-olds perform remarkably well in international comparison, and the quality throughout the country is evenly good.

As you can understand, after the PISA results were made public we have received a great deal of attention from other countries, whose education authorities all pose the same question: how did you do it?

I try to analyse the Finnish education policy in the light of this. In doing this, I will be referring also to the notions of the Finnish education researchers who have done their share in analysing the factors behind successful education policy.

First of all, it is important to recognise that there is no single factor which would explain the good results. One factor rises above others, though. And that is the fact that Finnish children read a lot and they are interested in reading. This factor had a bigger impact in Finland, whereas in other OECD countries family background played a greater role. So it seems that in Finland, the comprehensive school has really managed to arouse students' interest in reading.

Actually, Finnish education researchers argue that this has to do with the fact that we have flexible school curriculum in Finland, which encourages pupils to take up subjects in which they are really interested in and are good at. This helps pupils develop and maintain positive attitude to education and learning, which in turn facilitates learning itself.

Reading is one of the most important hobbies of young people in Finland. This hobby is supported by the dense network of free public libraries. Nowadays, all libraries also offer access to internet to all their clients, and thus supports the idea of developing Finland into a knowledge-based society.

By bringing in the libraries, I would like to emphasise the importance of a holistic approach to education policy. Education policy is part of societal development, and cannot deliver successful results, if it is not developed hand in hand with other sectors of society.

In Finland this means that educationalists work in close collaboration at all levels with labour, culture, youth, media and social and welfare sectors. This has been the way in
which we have managed to create a certain culture of learning to Finnish society, which in itself helps the school to carry out its duties.

The cornerstone of the Finnish education policy has long been the concept of educational equality. Since the debate in the 1970s over the comprehensive school, all major political parties have shared this vision. As a small nation, we cannot afford to educating only the top people, but we have to invest in educating all. This approach meant that the parallel school system – not very unlike the present German one – was overhauled and replaced by the comprehensive school system in the 1970s. Before that children had to make their educational choice at the age of 10 whether they wanted to go to grammar school or continue their studies at the so-called folk school which did not give eligibility for higher education.

Today, the principle of equity is reflected in the fact that we have a regionally covering network of educational institutions: 4 000 comprehensive schools, about 750 upper secondary schools, 20 universities, 29 polytechnics and hundreds of other educational institutions offering adult education. And all of this in a country of about 5,2 million people.

Regionalised higher education system has in fact been assessed as one of the most successful tools for regional development.

When the policy aims at providing high-quality education for all, it is self-evident that this cannot be achieved without extra efforts. To support this kind of policy you need to establish teaching and guidance and counselling services for those pupils and students who cannot cape without additional help or attention in the regular school system. Special- needs education in comprehensive schools, access to guidance and counselling services at all levels of education are necessary.

Furthermore, I would like to stress the importance of a reflective and open planning system. In this kind of system the state central administration level admits that the expertise in pedagogical or scientific matters is not solely in its hands. In practice, this means for example that curricula at all levels must be flexible enough to allow individual variation. This helps to keep the young at school. Once you have established a national core curriculum, it is very important that the schools at the local level can actually make the decision on the details of their curricula, and also offer those kinds of interest-driven subjects the pupils want in that particular area. This, I feel, is especially important for boys who in their teens very often lose interest in school work.

This kind of approach also allows better cooperation between schools and other society. What we have learned in Finland is, that if you want to implement a major educational reform, you have to involve the whole civic society, teachers, pupils, students, parents, researchers and the world of work already at the planning stage. This way people become committed to realising the reforms; they feel that they are subjects of the reforms, and nothing is just imposed on them.

One factor behind the overall performance of Finnish educational system is the highly qualified teachers in Finnish schools. Again, there were many sceptical voices heard when we at the end of the 1970s transferred all teacher education into universities. We used to have a system of teacher colleges, but at that time we felt that there was a need to upgrade teacher education to accommodate the needs of modern society.

Nowadays, all teachers except Kindergarten teachers, are required to have at least a master-Ievel qualification before they are eligible for permanent posts as teachers. Teachers specialising to teach school grades 1 to 6, study education science as their main subject. Teachers at the three last grades of the comprehensive school must have a major in the subject they teach, and also a minor in pedagogical studies. We have also maintained a system of university-related training schools, where future teachers must practice before they become fully qualified.

Naturally, when teachers are educated at universities, they can be trusted with a considerable amount of pedagogical responsibility in the class-room. I think that many young people appreciate the freedom of the teacher profession, and the profession is very highly valued in Finnish society. Universities receive many more applications to teacher training than they can accept. Teachers' salaries are not particularly good, but still competitive among academic professions. So we do not share the problem many other societies are facing, that is the lack of good, motivated teachers. One problem we share with other countries, and that is the lack of male teachers. In Finland, too, single-parent families are more and more common, so many children would benefit from proper male role models at school.

When analysing the Finnish success story of education, we must take into account the structure of Finnish society. We are still a very homogeneous culture. Although the immigration has risen rapidly during the past ten years, we still have no more than about 2 per cent of immigrants of the whole population. This of course makes the schools' work a bit easier compared to many other OECD countries with hugely heterogeneous societies. But on other hand, we have a good record of dealing with our traditional minorities. For example, we can guarantee full educational rights for our Swedish-speaking minority of 6 per cent. They can study – if they so wish – in Swedish right from the Kindergarten to doctoral studies.

Are the results then depending on the fact that we spend more on education than others? That is not the fact. We invest to education about the OECD average. Finnish expenditure on educational institutions as percentage of GDP is 5,8 % while the OECD average is 5,6%. The highest figure is in Korea, 8,2 %:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would now like to move on to higher education policy in Finland and say also a few words about our science and technology policy.

As I said earlier, we have a wide provision of higher education in Finland. Today, we can offer a place either in university or polytechnic to an average of 65 per cent of the age cohort. This is a remarkably high figure in international comparison, but it is the result of a chosen strategy of our country. In the beginning of the 1990s when Finland faced her worst economic depression ever, we were faced with a totally new situation also in the education policy. Suddenly, the employment rate rocketed up to 20 per cent and youth unemployment was huge. This all was a result of a long chain of unforeseen events in political and economic circumstances affecting Europe, and, indeed, the whole world.

The liberalisation of international trade and capital towards the end of the 1980s together with the collapse of the Soviet Union affected Finnish economic life deeply. One could even argue that some of our industrial fields died along with the end of the bilateral trade between Finland and the Soviet Union. Ali in all, these dramatic changes meant that there was suddenly a need to redefine economic structures in Finland.

First of all, a national strategy was drawn at the level of the whole Government. It was decided that in spite of the strict budget discipline, we would need to invest in education and R&D. We also increased intake of new students to universities and polytechnics and organised open university education anew to allow more young people into education and to keep them out of unemployment. We made the decision to increase the share of education and research in the field of technology and other areas, where there were growth opportunities and thus jobs to be expected.

This strategy has been successful. Finland survived the depression, but admittedly at heavy social cost. The structural changes in economy had been so drastic that we lost most of low-skilled jobs in a very short period of time, and although we enjoyed a seven- year period of economic growth, we still have an unacceptably high unemployment rate of about 8 per cent. Re-educating the low-skilled workers is still one of the most urgent duties of the Government, because without skills and knowledge update they cannot find placement in the competitive Finnish labour market.

A dynamic innovation system

The Finnish innovation system consists of the producers and users of knowledge, and the various interactive relations between them. Central elements in the innovation system are education and training, research and development, and knowledge-intensive business. Varied international cooperation permeates the whole system.

New knowledge is produced by universities and polytechnics, research institutes and industry, among others. Knowledge is chiefly used by industry, private citizens, and policymakers and administrations responsible for the development of society.

The national science, technology and innovation policies are formulated by the Science and Technology Policy Counsil of Finland, which is chaired by the Prime Minister. Science policy comes under the Ministry of Education and technology policy under the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Other ministries are responsible for R&D in their sectors.

The Academy of Finland and Tekes are the foremost expert financing organisations implementing science and technology policy.

The Academy of Finland allocates most of the funds at its disposal on a competitive basis through universities to researchers and research projects, centres of excellence in research, researcher posts and researcher training.

The National Technology Agency (Tekes) finances and boosts challenging R&D projects carried out by business enterprises, research institutes and universities. The aim is to diversify the industrial structure, promote exports and create new business and jobs.

One form of action, which is an important focus for the Academy and Tekes, is multiannual research and technology programmes launched annually to strengthen knowledge in emerging fields of science and technology and to boost creative research environments of to address problems important to society.

The Finnish National Fund for Research and Development, Sitra, is an independent funding body directly subordinate to Parliament. Sitra provides venture capital for high-tech business; the projects thus launched make a significant contribution to the development of the new economy in Finland.

There are over 200 learned societies in Finland. They have an important place in scientific publication and in the popularisation of science. The societies are voluntary organisations operating within a given discipline. In addition, there is the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and the Swedish-speaking Society of Sciences and Letters. The umbrella organisation for learned societies is the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies.

We firmly believe that future success of Finland can only rely on highly-qualified people and expertise developed through scientific research. This is why we invest some 3,5 per cent of GDP on research and development work. Higher education and R&D constitute the basis of our innovation system and serve the development of the whole society: the better research is made, the better qualified people universities and polytechnics can produce and the more knowledge there is to be transferred to the benefit and needs of the society and economic life. In recent years, we have paid special attention to knowledge transfer, and I must say, we have been quite pleased with the results. One of the competitive edges of the Finnish universities has been their close cooperation with business and industry. Actually, during the 1990s business and industry tripled their contributions to higher education. Mainly this is funding for commissioned research work.

Finland joined the European Union in the beginning of 1995. In the educational field we had systematically started promoting internationalisation in the late 1980s. Thus, our universities and polytechnics were well prepared for European cooperation that truly opened to them in the 1990s. Nowadays, all our universities and polytechnics offer education in English to attract international students to Finland. We believe that higher education in today's Europe needs to be international by definition. We are still looking for ways to make Finnish higher education attractive to more foreign students. At the same time the Ministry of Education has encouraged the universities and polytechnics to integrate international dimension to all their degree programmes.

As we are a small nation and very dependable on international cooperation and competition, we have emphasised that every graduate from a Finnish institutions of higher education must be competitive not only at the Finnish labour market, but also on global markets. This means that there have to be ways to assess and evaluate our education on a regular basis. Universities and polytechnics are obliged by legislation to take part in external evaluations and the results of the evaluations must be public. We have established Higher Education Evaluation Council to help the institutions in their evaluation work. Normally all the external evaluations include a peer review with foreign experts, and students and staff are always involved in the evaluation projects. The process in itself has helped to raise the quality of education in our institutions. To ensure proper attention to quality issues, part of the performance-based funding for higher education institutions is allocated on the basis of excellence in quality. Money seems to be the best way to make sure that new policies have direct impact on the institutional level.

Because we want to be competitive at the international level, we have taken the so-called Bologna process seriously in Finland. Our higher education system is Bologna-compatible as it is, but we are going to make in-depth curricula reforms in every field, so that the university degrees will be genuinely based on two cycles in 2005.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to conclude my presentation by welcoming closer education cooperation between our two countries. We would be pleased to continue the sharing of experiences in the fields of education and research.