Finnish Educator: Belarusian Teachers Should Be Given More Freedom

Finns told Belarusians about the secret of the “educational miracle”.

The organizers had to change the venue to host a master-class with famous Finnish teacher Kari Louhivuori twice, and to terminate registration for the event earlier than expected, as even to them such number of people wishing to make it to the event came as a surprise.

Over 2 thousand people registered for the master-class “The instruments of Finnish education in the Belarusian reality”, organized by the company “A-100 Development”. Among those who came to listen to the famous teacher were parents of school kids, teachers from various cities and villages of Belarus, school headmasters, and representatives of the Ministry of Education.

— The main thing that can be done for teachers is to let them work without interference! — Kari Loihivuori told the journalists a couple of hours before the actual master-class, smiling. — I heard that many are disatisfied with the Belarusian system of education. The same situation was in Finland in the 1970s. However, the society decided that the system of education should be improved.

The kp.by collected the quates of the teacher, which are way too timely for our system of education as well. This was clear from the reaction of the audience.

ON INSPECTIONS AT SCHOOL

— Every teacher present here knows that any inspection (it is about school inspections — Ed.) is a theater. You put on a suit, a tie, the inspector comes in, everyone smiles at him. Children are very intimidated, and teachers tell them: if you don’t do this or that during the inspection, then you will have it back. And when the inspector leaves, everyone exhales: oh, where are our cigarettes? Now we will finally get back to normal life. In the Finnish school there is a system of self-evaluation, not inspections. After each passing academic year, students, parents and teachers mark 10 areas in which the school has shown itself well, and 10, which require improvement. Thus, we evaluate and develop.

ON THE PRESTIGE OF THE TEACHER’S PROFESSION

— In Finland, the profession of a teacher is very prestigious. Very talented school graduates go to be educated a steachers. Each teacher has a post-university degree. In our country, we realized that we do not have oil reserves, as in Norway. We only have forests — the “green gold”, but we cannot endlessly sell paper. Therefore, we came to the conclusion that our strength should be education. We must be an educated nation.

ON FREE EDUCATION

— Education in Finland is free. Absolutely everything is free. We do not spend money on something if we can save it. And it does not fall into someone's pockets. We do not have this situation: one school has everything, and it is popular, and the other is not popular, because something is missing.

ON SCHOOL REFORMS

– We don’t have reforms forced from the above. The administration or the ministry never forces anything, all the things are discussed with teachers. Teachers in Finland are absolutely autonomous. They can choose any methodology they consider reasonable. Teachers are experts, who decide how to teach kids.

ON EXAMS

— There is no accountability or testing. We do not have to constantly prove how good we are. In some countries, it is believed that children should be constantly tested, they arrange examinations for them. Due to this, it is allegedly possible to determine how well a student is prepared. Forget about tough tests and exams. I do not need to know if my school showed better results than its neighbor.

ON SCHOOL UNIFORM

— In Finland, the school uniform of students is jeans and hoodies. Even many teachers wear sweatshirts and jeans. Very informal. Sometimes it seems that there is a danger when in high school students begin to look closely, who has what brand of jeans, cheaper or more expensive. However, this is not such an important problem, and it does not affect anything.

ON CHANGES IN OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM

— You cannot just copy someone's education system. Your own school must be created on the basis of the history and culture of your country. Changes in the school system require a lot of time, you have to be patient. But I think it all starts with the training of teachers. In any case, teachers need to be given more freedom to influence those things that happen in school. It is very important that teachers work in the school administration.