Finland’s education system: the best education model in Europe

You have surely heard about the success of Finland’s education model… in recent years it has achieved top scores in the PISA report and is closely watched by education think tanks all over the world.

But why is it so successful? The features of the Finnish education model.

Rankings aside, if there is one thing Finnish society cares about, it is teaching skills that will still be useful in the future; skills that are no longer the same in a world that is changing fast, where adaptability and discernment will be key to building a thriving society. Some of the features that have earned the Finnish education system so much prestige are:

• A focus on critical thinking and soft skills
• Excellent teachers
• Personalized learning
• No homework
• Adapting to each student.

What do we share with this model of teaching?

We are close to the Finnish education model, which has brought the Nordic country great success in school performance, and we share similar features in the way students learn. Read on:

An individual learning plan

An individual learning plan for each child, in which the teaching staff —with mentors who follow each student’s journey— get to know what interests and excites them, and nurture their abilities and strengths while also assessing their limits, with personal follow-up that makes them want to learn more and more.

Critical thinking and soft skills

The debate over the supposed removal of philosophy from the school curriculum recently made the front pages. It is a subject that has been fighting for years to stay in the curriculum, given its importance for reflecting on reality and on our own existence from an ethical and moral perspective.

At Dragon American School, philosophy is one of the electives our students can choose as part of their personalized schedule; a schedule in which freely chosen subjects like this one play a big part in building the critical thinking we work on so much in the classroom. As well as learning about the great minds and schools of philosophy, one of the main aims of the subject, taught in English from primary school, is for children and teenagers to be able to question the world around them and come up with creative, different solutions to common problems.

“People sometimes think that philosophy is a hard, boring subject for younger children. Nothing could be further from the truth: getting my students to think ‘outside the box’, with questions and activities suited to their age, is one of the most fun and exciting parts of my job.”

Chase Terrier, philosophy teacher at Dragon American School.

Because that is one of the aims of our teaching method, unique in Spain. Thinking “outside the box”, encouraging metacognitive learning*, sparking an interest in knowledge through students’ own experiences.

Ongoing training and innovation

Teachers who are constantly learning and evolving so that they can adapt to an ever faster-changing reality, where technology is one more tool in the service of flexibility. With its support, we can offer tailor-made pathways and a variety of subjects planned as short, term-long “sprints” (following an agile methodology) that adapt to the interests of every child in our school community.

Modular spaces in a natural setting

Different kinds of space, where the architecture itself encourages dialogue and participation, also matter a great deal in these new models. That is the case with our modular spaces, the type of classroom we have, the natural setting we head out into to explore and reason, and the way teachers and students relate to each other.

A way of learning that will very probably shape the future of education in the years to come. The debate is no longer about what is learned, but how it is learned, because the school of the future is a more human school. And at Dragon American School we are clear about that. We have been for more than a decade.

• Metacognitive learning is the ability to regulate one’s own learning processes. It means being able to understand how one thinks and learns and, in this way, apply that knowledge about these processes to achieve better results.