Gabriel Sahlgren
Having scored at the top of the Pisa tables in the early and mid-2000s, the Finnish education system has now begun to slip. Sahlgren reveals that Finnish education has faltered just as new reforms have begun to take effect – the same reforms that had previously been attributed with propelling the country to the top of Pisa.
New evidence indicates that Finland's success was to a large extent due to historical, economic, and cultural factors that have little to do with the country's education system. It also became clear that the country's hierarchical educational culture, including traditional teaching methods, partly explained its past achievements. This is now changing, which explains the current decline.
The report emphasises that overall, the strongest policy lesson to take from Finland's performance is the danger of throwing out authority in schools, and especially of getting rid of knowledge-based, teacher dominated instruction.
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