Teacher Training provides qualified education

All teachers working in schools as full time are graduate of university.

Teacher teach almost all lessons in primary schools (1-6 degrees). They have Master degree which focuses on pedagogic skills. Both in the first and second level of secondary schools, subject specific teaching is taught by teachers who have master degree of their subjects and who complete studies in education sciences.

Daycare and pre-primary teachers are also university graduates.

Teacher training is highly popular field and teachers have high status in society. The number of the application for working as teachers are almost five times as much as open vacancies.

‘Education management authority is given to municipalities, schools and teachers in a way there will be interaction and cooperation’ says Kauppinen. ‘This trust culture creates teachers who become independent experts.’ Teachers who know their students needs very well and also teachers who are loyals to national curriculum aims..

High quality teaching materials have highly importance. Huge investment supports having school books and other teaching materials both in Finnish and Swedish which is the other formal language in Finland.

Materials are becoming electronic and online day by day. Kauppinen believes that the biggest struggle which schools will encounter in the future is improving cooperation between home and school and improving dialogues between schools and environment.

EDUCATIONAL AIMS BECOMING STANDARDS

Government  decides about school subjects and general aims of both complex schools and second level of secondary schools.

The basis of this decision is established by Finnish National Education Committee of Ministry of Education and Culture. Later, Education providers who mostly consist of municipalities improve their own curriculum and school-specific plans depending on this decision. So, all the students in the country learn the same subject in the same quality and the same level.

The gainings of the students in the schools are evaluated by national evaluations including random samples of five in a hundred . Also, these evaluations are done regularly.

Second level of secondary schools finish with a national test by National Maturity Test Committee.