Why should anyone in the United Kingdom care about how another country runs its schools and universities?
Finnish pupils have the least school hours of any industrialised country It can be complicated enough trying to make sense of the rapidly diverging systems in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, without having to look any further afield. But education systems, like economies, are now in a global market, with a well-educated workforce now considered a vital component in a nation’s success. And this has seen a sharply rising level of interest in how other countries run their education systems – with countries such as Finland showing a particular model that has proved highly successful. Increasingly education ministries have been peering over their neighbours’ walls to borrow ideas and to use other countries’ experiences as test-beds for their own policy. For example, there has been plenty of soul-searching in England over expanding universities – whether we should have more places and how these should be funded. But this is no longer just a domestic decision – as the meaningfu
