This evening I was reading the reflections to the recent PISA study. Although commentary was predominantly from American educators, you could fairly easily substitute the US centric views for the UK. As with most review Finland is the aspiration. What makes Finland unique? Two quotes from Finnish Education Expert, Pasi Sahlberg, made me reflect on my own teaching practices.
We put well-prepared teachers in the classroom, give them maximum autonomy, and we trust them to be responsible.
Almost 70% of our last Department meeting focused on the new specification and not on the teaching and learning strategies to be employed to deliver them, where is the autonomy there?
We don’t believe in competition among students, teachers, or schools. We believe in collaboration, trust, responsibility, and autonomy.
This is not an educational culture I have experienced, far from it. My experience has to focused on benchmarks, pass rates and the over emphasised D/C board line candidates. There is minimal within school collaboration and even less cross school collaboration, yet where this has been achieved, the professional benefits have been significant.