Why is scandinavian education so good

For a vocational program, students must have passing grades in five additional subjects, for a total of eight. As all education is publicly funded, all students have a large selection of choices. This prevents limiting choices for those with a less fortunate background, as you find in the UK. Interestingly, Sweden have a school choice arrangements where you are able to choose any other state school or a private school at no cost to yourself.

Reports from the Swedish National Agency for Education have warned that it is mostly better-educated, middle-class parents who take advantage of the right to choose schools.

Children from middle-class backgrounds tend to congregate in the same few, highly popular, schools. The number of independent schools in Sweden is growing, and today school choice is seen as a right.

The Swedish government supports the establishment of independent schools, which must be approved by the Schools Inspectorate and follow the national curricula and syllabuses. There are also a few international schools whose curricula follow those of other countries. These schools are partly funded by the Swedish government and are mainly aimed at the children of foreign nationals who are in Sweden for a limited time.

The independent school system in Sweden, in which education is free and students have general access to schools with the freedom to choose among a variety of providers, has attracted interest from around the world. In Sweden, some people think it is wrong to run schools for profit, and highlight examples of poor conditions and inconsistencies as a consequence of the system.

Advocates of independent schools note the many positive results found in statistical surveys. The mechanization and rigid assembly-line methods we use today are spitting out ill-prepared worker clones, rudderless adults and an uninformed populace. But no amount of pontificating will change what we already know. The American education system needs to be completely revamped — from the first grade to the Ph. Many people are familiar with the stereotype of the hard-working, rote memorization, myopic tunnel vision of Eastern Asian study and work ethics.

Many of these countries, like China, Singapore, and Japan amongst others routinely rank in the number one spots in both math and science. Some pundits point towards this model of exhaustive brain draining as something Americans should aspire to become. Work more! Study harder! Live less. Finland is the answer — a country rich in intellectual and educational reform has initiated over the years a number of novel and simple changes that have completely revolutionized their educational system.

They outrank the United States and are gaining on Eastern Asian countries. Are they cramming in dimly-lit rooms on robotic schedules? Stressing over standardized tests enacted by the government? No way. Finland is leading the way because of common-sense practices and a holistic teaching environment that strives for equity over excellence. Staying in line with our print-minded sensibilities, standardized testing is the blanket way we test for subject comprehension.

Filling in little bubbles on a scantron and answering pre-canned questions is somehow supposed to be a way to determine mastery or at least competence of a subject.

What often happens is that students will learn to cram just to pass a test and teachers will be teaching with the sole purpose of students passing a test. Learning has been thrown out of the equation. Finland has no standardized tests. Their only exception is something called the National Matriculation Exam, which is a voluntary test for students at the end of an upper-secondary school equivalent to an American high school.

All children throughout Finland are graded on an individualized basis and grading system set by their teacher. Tracking overall progress is done by the Ministry of Education, which samples groups across different ranges of schools. A lot of the blame goes to the teachers and rightfully so sometimes. Teaching programs are the most rigorous and selective professional schools in the entire country. The concept of the pupil-teacher dynamic that was once the master to apprentice cannot be distilled down to a few bureaucratic checks and standardized testing measures.

It needs to be dealt with on an individual basis. Are Scandinavians some sort of super-human language geniuses? Does the mix of cold temperatures and lack of natural light have some sort of positive effect on the brain, that makes one more susceptible to speaking in multiple tongues? What I suspect is at play is language similarity, a cultural interest in English speaking media and an education system that makes a success out of learning a second language while at school.

Plus, how you can can apply these hacks in your own quests to achieve fluency in a new language. English and the Scandinavian languages are all considered Germanic languages. English — along with Dutch, German, Yiddish and other languages — is considered part of the West Germanic branch of languages. Professor Faarland notes that many Norwegian words closely resemble English — as does the structure of the language. The main point here is that English and the Scandinavian languages come from the same core language family.

As such, English share several similarities with Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Sweden, Norway and Denmark are all famous for their excellent publicly funded schools, with small class sizes that encourage all children to learn. These schools start teaching students English during their primary years. The Danish tend to start learning English as a foreign language when they are around Grade three.

Norwegians begin their English studies around Grades In Sweden, English is considered a core subject , along with Swedish and Mathematics. I get hundreds of emails from language learners, telling me how their academic education failed them.

I studied the native language of my own country for eleven years at school, along with five years of German. I absolutely could not claim to be an expert in either subject when I finished my education.

So, what is it that sets Scandinavians apart from anyone else wishing to achieve fluency in a foreign language? Uncomfortably for Michael Gove, however, a closer look at Finnish schools reveals an education system built on unapoligetically social democratic principles. In fact, despite the fact that English schoolchildren start at five most children in Europe begine school later.

Children in Finland have more time to be children. In Finlanf there are just 12 students per teacher, meaning students have sufficient teacher interaction in the classroom.

Rather than exams, school outcomes are measured using from sample-based surveys. All children are taught together in the same classroom and take one standardized test at There are no grammar schools, private schools, religious schools or academies. They are also run by education experts rather than by politicians and business people. Teachers are valued in Finland, and as a result are trusted to teach. Teachers in Finland also spend less time in the classroom than their American or European counterparts and therefore have more time to work on the curriculum and their own personal development.

There is also more in the way of arts and crafts and learning by doing, rather than rote memorisation. Through interaction at recess, children learn social skills, such as how to cooperate and compromise and how to inhibit aggression.