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Finland Report - BBC: LINK ¤ B B C

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• "Finland is a country in the far north of Europe, bordered by Norway, Sweden and Russia"

 

 

 

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• "unlike their fellow-Scandinavian neighbours to the west, the Finns are not a Germanic people but rather speak a language related to Estonian, some languages of Siberia and, more distantly, Hungarian"

 

 

 

 

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• "despite its substantial size, Finland is relatively thinly-populated. Around two-thirds of its territory is covered by forest and about a tenth by lakes"

 

 

 

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• "hundreds of years of Swedish rule were followed by a further century of Russian control before independence in 1917"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "Finland is a parliamentary republic, with main most executive power vested in the prime minister and cabinet"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "multi-party coalitions are the norm"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "the president has some powers relating to foreign policy"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "a eurozone member since 2002, Finland has an export-driven economy"

 

 

 

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• "but Finland's economy has struggled with a decline in the important electronic, ship-building and paper industries"

 

 

 

 

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• "in particular its main success story of recent decades, mobile phone giant Nokia, has suffered a steep decline in business"

 

 

 

 

 

 

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• "the country spends heavily on education, training and research"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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highly trained, respected and free: Finland's Teachers are different - the Guardian: LINK ¤ the GUARDIAN

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• "extensive training is the basis for giving teachers the autonomy to work the way they want"

 

 

 

 

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• "the result is a highly prized profession and an education system always near the top in international rankings"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "welcome to a country where teaching is a highly prized profession"

 

 

 

 

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• "high-level training is the basis for giving young teachers"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "a great deal of autonomy to choose what methods they use in the classroom"

 

 

 

 

 

 

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• "in contrast to England where teaching is somewhere between administration and giving tests to students"

 

 

 

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• "in Finland, teachers are largely free from external requirements such as inspection, standardised testing and government control"

 

 

 

 

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• "teachers need to have this high-quality education"

 

 

 

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• "so they really do know how to use the freedom they are given, and learn to solve problems in a research-based way"

 

 

 

 

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• "the most important thing we teach them is to take pedagogical decisions and judgments for themselves"

 

 

 

 

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• "for a small, agrarian and relatively poor nation, educating all of its youth equally well was seen as the best way to catch up with other countries"

 

 

 

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• "the Finnish dream was for all children, regardless of family background or personal conditions"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "to have a good school in their community"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "a focus that has remained unchanged for the past four decades"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• "in the early phase, during the 70s and 80s, there was strict central direction and control over schools, state-prescribed curriculums, external school inspections and detailed regulation"

 

 

 

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• "but a second phase, from the early 90s, consciously set out to create a new culture of education"

 

 

 

 

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• "characterised by trust between educational authorities and schools"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "local control, professionalism and autonomy"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "schools became responsible for their own curriculum planning and student assessment, while state inspections were abandoned"

 

 

 

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• "this required teachers to have high academic credentials and be treated like professionals"

 

 

 

 

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• "not only is teacher education in Finland strongly research-based"

 

 

 

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• "but all the students on the primary school master’s course are engaged in research themselves"

 

 

 

 

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• "we want to produce cognitive dissonance. The task of a good "didactician" is to disturb the thinking of someone who assumes they know everything about teaching"

 

 

 

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• "just because you’ve been doing something for 20 years and it works for you doesn’t mean it works for other teachers, or other students"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• "student teachers are running day-long multidisciplinary workshops for pupils aged 13 to 19"

 

 

 

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• "in one, Maria Hyväri, 24, is discussing Dewey, Steiner and Montessori"

 

 

 

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• "and asking pupils to think critically about teaching methods at the school. Classes are mixed and there is no streaming"

 

 

 

 

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• "there are all these new teaching tools and ideas, and it’s great because here we can try different things"

 

 

 

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• "it makes me feel inspired"

 

 

 

 

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• "Finland’s Pisa scores are a byproduct of the system rather than a central goal"

 

 

 

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• "when we got the results, we were thinking, if we are that good"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "how bad are the others ?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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• "it showed that the country was doing some things right"

 

 

 

 

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• "e.g. the decision in the 1970s to make primary school teacher education a university degree"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "educationists point to Finland’s broad acceptance of values such as equality and collaboration"

 

 

 

 

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• "that are embedded in its version of the Nordic welfare model"

 

 

 

 

 

 

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• "teachers in Finland are autonomous professionals, respected for making a difference to young people’s lives"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "as a result, those who choose to train are devoted to teaching for life"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Microsoft buys Nokia - the Guardian: LINK ¤ the GUARDIAN

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• "from humble beginnings as a paper mill set up 150 years ago in the small town of Nokia in southern Finland"

 

 

 

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• "the company became the country's global claim to fame before subsiding under a withering assault from Apple and others"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "finally, its mobile phone business was sold to Microsoft"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "in the late 1980s, the company began selling the first mass-market mobile phones, virtually introducing the world to the concept"

 

 

 

 

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• "almost single-handed, the company powered Finland out of a slump in the early 1990s"

 

 

 

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• "by the end of the century, Nokia was the world's No 1 mobile phone-maker"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "with a 40% share of the market"

 

 

 

 

 

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• "Finns - especially those within the company - began to believe Nokia was somehow magical"

 

 

 

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• "when its fortunes began to fall - soon after Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 - many still believed it would be able to stage a comeback"

 

 

 

 

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• "instead its shares slumped by more than 80% in the following years"

 

 

 

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• "its global market share in mobile phone sales has slumped to 14%. In the smartphone market - 3.1%"

 

 

 

 

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• "the jobs will eventually relocate from Finland, like the IT stuff was outsourced to the Indian companies Tata and HCL"

 

 

 

 

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• "now, perhaps, Finland can develop a broader array of more modest treasures rather than relying on a single Sampo"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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• "officially the Republic of Finland, is a nordic country situated in the fennoscandian region of northern Europe"

 

 

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• "it is bordered by Sweden to the west, Norway to the north, Russia to the east, and Estonia to the south across the Gulf of Finland"

 

 

 

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• "it developed an advanced economy while building an extensive Nordic-style welfare state, resulting in widespread prosperity"

 

 

 

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• "Finland is a top performer in numerous metrics, including education, civil liberties, quality of life, and human development"

 

 

 

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• Population: 5.5 million