High school students often have less than a half hour of homework a night. Primary students have no homework and are often not even formally graded nor do they write exams or tests until the upper years.
By contrast, children in Hong Kong enter school at age five or six and attend for 13 years. Much like Canada and the U.S.
However, their students have typically four hours of homework a night in primary school.
Students are tested rigorously and future aspirations depend upon their early school performance and what educational stream they are considered fit for.
There is little to no competition in Finnish schools, although after their first nine years students are divided into vocational or matriculation streams.
Children usually wear uniforms, but call teachers by their first names and spend little time in formal book learning and more in observing the world around them.
In Hong Kong, competition is fierce for the coveted higher education spots. Uniforms are compulsory and rules are enforced with strict vigour and a demerit system that can affect a young child’s future. Critics have said the Hong Kong Education system relies too heavily on books and rote memorization.
Two vastly different systems: they share some similarities to our own, but in many ways are inconceivable to us. But they do have much in common. Both countries are recognized internationally using many educational indexes as top achieving countries. Both have high literacy rates. In both countries, dropping out of school is a foreign concept. The secondary school dropout rate in Finland is four percent at its highest. In Hong Kong almost no students drop out.
In Canada, by contrast, we often rank in the top 10 of education indexes, but have a hard time breaking the top five. While our education system is respected, it has never been held up as a gold standard internationally. Our literacy rate is abysmal, with almost half of our adults considered not at a functional level. And our drop-out rates are disgusting. One in four children will not complete secondary education in Canada, and that’s in the better areas.
So what can we learn from countries such as Finland and Hong Kong? How can we take the experiences of two vastly different countries and use their expertise to improve our situation? And why are we different from them?
It’s not spending that sets us apart. Although Hong Kong invests more heavily in education spending than Canada — at 23 per cent of the national budget, Finland spends exactly the same percentage as us: 12.5 per cent of government spending is on education.
It’s not class sizes either. The average student to teacher ratio in both Canada and Finland is 17 pupils per teacher. In Hong Kong, with its lower birth rate, it’s 14 pupils.
So where are the key differences?
In the main, it is the cultural influences that affect their education standards.
In Canada , a typical joke is “those who can do; those who can’t teach.” There is no humour or truth in that statement in Hong Kong and Finland.
All teachers in Finland have a master’s degree or higher. For every post-secondary spot in teacher training, there are 10 applicants. Although students may call teachers by their first names and their salaries may not be astronomical, they command a lot of respect in society at large. Teachers have the freedom to select their own curriculum materials.
Similarly, in Hong Kong, education is valued and those who go into teaching are prepared from a young age for their future career. Teaching is a revered choice and good teachers are valued as highly as celebrities in our culture.
A further difference is in the approach to educating different students. Although Finnish schools have a reputation for inclusive education and no special programs for gifted students and Hong Kong is the exact opposite — often leaving lower performing students behind and offering special classes and incentives for gifted students, both countries acknowledge that education leads to different outcomes for different students.
In Canada we are so concerned with equality for all that we sometimes forget that the pressure we place on students and children who are below average. By very definition, 49 per cent of children are below average. Instead of embracing differences, we lay responsibility on the teachers’ shoulders, asking them to obtain a level playing field for all. Instead of creating different streams of secondary education for students with different potentials, we create individualized learning plans so that all students can participate in the same classes. Instead of looking to the student to be accountable for his or her learning, we make teachers accountable for teaching.
We look at vocational training as second rate compared to “higher” education at the university level. And despite the fact that many vocationally trained graduates earn higher incomes than bachelor’s degree holders, we would never consider telling a student that vocational training is what’s in their future.
Of course, the struggle to obtain the best for your child is universal, but a truly progressive education system would be based upon a culture that understands that everyone isn’t the same. And that teachers have the hardest job of all — helping each child reach his or her full potential, whether salesclerk or lawyer.
