Schools | The Board of Education has distanced itself from the everyday life of primary schools, says the researcher

Board of Education has become alienated from the everyday life of elementary schools, says a researcher from the University of Helsinki who is familiar with the history of schools.

University lecturer Jari Salminen says that the agency’s statutory mission changed in the 1990s from an inspection agency to a development agency. He proposes the establishment of a separate committee to solve the problems of elementary schools, which have been discussed lively in public.

“The task of the board of education should be considered in that committee at the same time. It could cancel a bit of development and invest in looking behind. You could even consider creating some kind of inspection system,” says Salminen.

Salminen does not really want to restore the school inspection system, which he describes as expensive. However, he points out that Finland is one of the few OECD countries that does not have something similar. It was stopped with the reform made in the 1990s.

“In my opinion, it has weakened the Board of Education’s ability to monitor the activities of schools. In their time, the inspectors constantly brought data to the agency on where schools in Finland go and on the other hand gave feedback to the schools.”

The Board of Education director of education, training and skills Jarkko Niiranen according to the agency is not alienated from the everyday life of schools. According to him, the starting point of the Board of Education is to exist for the field.

“The organizers of education and training are the most important stakeholder group for us,” says Niiranen.

He says that the agency works actively in different networks, which have also been developed with feedback from the field. As examples, he mentions leadership networks, such as the principals’ leadership network. In addition, teachers can work, for example, in project networks. However, he clarifies that the networks are based on voluntariness, which can cause conflicting problems.

“If it is felt that we are not visible enough, it needs to be developed and strengthened.”

At the beginning of the year, there is a lively discussion about the state of the elementary school. The discussion has been accelerated by various announcements about declining learning results and the parliamentary elections in a month, which encourage the parties to present their views on the matter.

Despite the lively discussion, according to Niiranen, the elementary school has not collapsed or is about to collapse. However, he says that the most important challenge for schools in the future is the change in the demographic structure. It threatens especially the ability of small municipalities to organize basic education.

“We will forcefully come to a situation where the number of students will decrease by about a quarter in the next ten years. Locally, the bill can be even higher.”

Director General of the Board of Education Minna Kelhä called for broader shoulders for the training organizers last week, Ylen in A-talk. He presented the “social security reform of education”.

Niiranen says that the Board of Education does not want to take a position on whether this would mean in practice, for example, that basic education would start to be increasingly concentrated in the area of ​​several municipalities, even if the municipalities still remain independent.

“At this point, the Board of Education does not have a clear model that we are following. We are calling for a social discussion about how every child and young person can get an equally high-quality education throughout Finland.”

STT also interviewed a representative of the teaching trade union OAJ and the National Center for Evaluation of Education (Karvi) about the situation in primary schools. Despite the vigorous public debate, none of the interviewees considers the primary school to have directly collapsed.

“We still rank well in international comparisons. Many would be envious of these results. However, it is worrying that the direction is downward”, says Salminen.

Director of OAJ’s education policy Nina Lahtinen considers the school to be at a watershed, however. He and Karvin’s director of general education Salla Venäläinen miss smaller group sizes in Finland.

Lahtinen would adjust the number of teachers more precisely than at present, so that the groups could be smaller.

“In primary education, i.e. during the first two grades, 18 students would be ideal. After that, until the end of elementary school, 20 is enough to get by,” says Lahtinen.

The organization’s election goals also include the idea that the minimum number of hours of basic education should be increased. The organization does not want new things to be taught in schools, but more time so that basic skills can be taught better than at present. In February, a corresponding opening was made by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Lahtinen and Venäläinen would also like to fix the so-called learning support.

“Either learning difficulties are better recognized or they have increased,” says Lahtinen.

The Russian refers to the idea, often repeated in public, that inclusion is a beautiful idea, the implementation of which does not work everywhere. Special classes have been dismantled without the necessary number of other adults joining the joint groups. The Russian would increase the training of special education teachers and the salary of assistants.

“Inclusion has been used a little as a means of saving money. It has also come up in the places we visited, that the teacher alone responds to the need for support.”

However, he says, based on Karvi’s school visits, that the need for support can be met in smaller groups and with sufficient resources. OAJ’s Lahtinen is on the same lines.

“If we can get the support working and the group sizes small enough, then whatever kind of students there are, we can make it work,” says Lahtinen.

Read more: Three principals from Helsinki now tell us what they think is happening in schools

Class sizes downsizing and training and hiring new teachers would require financial support from the state. University lecturer Salminen thinks the idea of ​​additional resources is beautiful, but not particularly realistic.

“I don’t really count on asking for money in this economic situation,” says Salminen.

If new resources are not available, teachers would not want new responsibilities either. OAJ has demanded labor peace in schools. By this, the organization means that new reforms are not constantly placed on teachers’ shoulders.

Salminen also estimates that elementary schools are plagued by overheated development. He characterizes the schools’ current curriculum, which has been in place since 2016, as very abstract and especially the student assessment criteria as imprecise.

New developments have been brought to the schools, but old responsibilities have not been reduced. According to the researcher, not enough time has been allocated to implement the changes. In repair shops, however, the lecturer would avoid making urgent changes.

“Now we also have to think about the repair shops in moderation, so that we don’t make hasty changes or complete renovations. Otherwise, we might be in an even deeper quagmire.”

StraitLahtinen and Venäläinen agree on one thing: the reason for the drop in learning results is not to be found in immigration or so-called S2 students who study Finnish or Swedish as their second language.

“If they (students with an immigration background) are completely removed from the sample, the trend is exactly the same. At least it’s not their fault,” Venäläinen says.

In the latest Pisa measurement, published in 2019, Finland had the biggest difference between immigrants and the native population of the OECD countries.

Read more: This is a school with a lot of S2 children and a better average than the rest of the country

According to Salminen, the trend can become a challenge in the long run. However, he adds that learning differences in Finland have also grown between girls and boys, and between Northern and Eastern Finland and the rest of the country.

According to Karvin Venäläinen, the solution to the school’s problems cannot be left in the hands of the teachers alone, but needs support from both the administration and families. He is worried that with digital devices, the school is competing for the children’s attention with new creators.

“Compared to before, the everyday life of children and young people is full of everything other than reading and focusing on homework,” he says.

The trio also agrees on one need for development: teachers should be consulted more.

If the committee proposed by Salminen ends up being established, he will flash a mandatory survey aimed at all teachers in the country in support of it.

“You should listen to the teachers, because they know what the real pain points are. They know them, not the researchers or the administration,” says Salminen, a researcher who trains teachers.