I have just arrived from Finland, where I had the chance to visit schools. There are very small disparities between establishments and between students in this country, in all socio-economic backgrounds.
To help me understand Finland’s success better, teacher Erja Schunk explained to me: “It is not the hours spent in class that determine the success of the students, but rather our efforts to ensure that children and adults are happy in be there; it must be a living environment in which to develop passions, without which it is impossible to hope that our society will be happy. »
However, according to the ranking of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network published for nine years now, Finland ranked first in 2021 of the countries where it is good to live. How to explain such success?
Education at the center of Finnish societal values
Although the Finnish system is flawed in some respects, education is free up to university level. A hearty all-you-can-eat meal is also offered free of charge each day, not to mention school supplies for all students up to 16 years old. We easily agree that it is anything but trivial as a choice of society. Vision and audacity were present in 1970 in Finland. These are three major factors that explain some very fine achievements.
In elementary school, students gradually spend 608 to 683 hours per year in class in Finland, compared to five hours per day for a total of 900 hours annually in Quebec. What’s more, Finnish students benefit from a 15-minute break after 45 minutes of instruction. During this recess, children go outside even on rainy days. Particularly at the primary level, teachers do not overload students with extra work after class, aware of the value of free time. Both pupils and school staff benefit from 10 weeks of vacation during the summer and another five weeks during the school year.
The pupil/teacher ratio fluctuates between 15 and 20. Strong image if any, the profession of teacher is neither a marathon nor a sprint, but a walk in the forest, to use the metaphor of Jean-Philippe Payette, Quebecer who has been teaching in Helsinki for eight years.
No wonder that, year after year, 6,000 students apply to university to become teachers, even if only 10% of them will be accepted.
Consequently, this humanistic and innovative approach allows students to remain more attentive and more productive, while school staff are less prone to burnout. The Finnish people have understood this for half a century. After these stops, they work on their gray matter.
How did they get there, when any society that relies on knowledge dreams of reaching such a level of plenitude?
The harmfulness of the encrypted report card of the Quebec school
The battery of evaluations that prevails in Quebec leads teachers to spend endless hours legitimizing the note in the report card. Here, from the first year, at the age of 6, panic sets in from the first report card in November when the child experiences learning difficulties.
One of the central objectives of the Finnish education system, where the pupil nevertheless begins his school career at the age of 7, consists in respecting the rhythm of learning of the pupil, and not in imposing on him assessments on a fixed date (and encrypted ballots), as is unfortunately the case in Quebec. Here, during his primary, it is more than 200 marks that the student will undergo, each of them requiring an average of three evaluations. An effective extinguisher!
Until the age of 9, pupils are not graded in Finland, but the progress of each person’s learning is rigorously monitored; and from 9 to 13 years old, they are assessed without a numbered report card. Learning can therefore take place without stress or stigma.
In this way, students are spared the feeling of incompetence that makes school so off-putting to them as children. The objective of the evaluation thus loses its competitive, punitive and, by extension, anxiety-inducing character. Rather, this time is used for teaching, whereas here we are teaching with a view to an evaluation.
Moreover, it is not an illusion to believe that the results of international examinations, including that of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), can be explained in particular by the absence of numerical reports and evaluations which are counterproductive because toxic, both for the student and for the teaching staff.
It should be noted that Finnish pupils are among the best in the world according to this triennial survey which covers three subjects (reading, science and mathematics), carried out among 15-year-old pupils in 85 countries.
Nearly 60 years after having succeeded in democratizing school in Quebec, could we not think about transforming our practices to attack this harmful dimension that is the encrypted report card, in order to better cultivate the pleasure of going to school? ‘school ? The essential, what!
When will there be a second quiet revolution in education for the well-being of children and staff in our Quebec schools?
To read tomorrow: Like Finland in 1970, Quebec schools need a revolution.