The Finnish education system’s PISA scores have seen a steady but significant decline since the highs of the 2000s.
In the view of Harvard professor and influential US economist Raj Chetty, Finland must bring in national exams and collect data on teachers if the country wants to return to the top of the PISA rankings.
In an interview with Yle, Chetty revealed that he used to refer to Finland when lecturing about his research.
“I often used Finland as an example of a place where teaching is high quality, teachers have university degrees, and the profession is valued. That’s probably part of the reason why you have, at least previously, had high social mobility,” he said.
In 2006, Finland scored high on mathematics, reading and science in the global study, which evaluates educational systems by measuring the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old pupils.
But Finland’s PISA scores have suffered a steady and significant decline since the heady days of the mid-2000s — as learning gaps between socioeconomic groups and genders have increased, while the differences between native-background and foreign-background students are among the largest in the OECD.
“Falling from the top to such a much weaker level is extremely rare,” Chetty noted.
Solving the equation
Raj Chetty has a proven track record in his research of proving very complex cause-and-effect relationships using large data sets, for example between education policy and equality of opportunity.
Many of his findings have been implemented directly in education policy decisions in the US.
He told Yle that the starting point for good education policy is research that provides information about the cause-and-effect of certain decisions or policy choices.
In Finland, however, there is very little cause-and-effect information available, so the reasons for the collapse in learning outcomes are largely a matter of guesswork.
He therefore urges Finnish authorities to start collecting more data about the education system than it currently does — starting with the roll out of national tests.
“Students don’t necessarily even need to be given grades from them, but the data obtained from them would be extremely useful [in developing education policy],” he said, citing the example of other Nordic nations, where students’ competence is tested with national exams every few years.
In Finland, data is only collected through random samples, which don’t enable cause-and-effect inference or comparisons across schools, regions, or time.
Chetty also emphasised the “vital” need for Finland to start collecting data on teachers, as without such information, it is impossible to deduce why some students and schools perform better than others.
“Knowing where teaching is good and where it needs developing is extremely valuable information in education policy decision-making,” he said.
Finnish authorities have never systematically collected data on teachers.
The establishment of a registry, where basic information about all teachers would be collected, has previously been mooted — but never came to pass.
Not a system of Big Brother
Chetty added a word of caution however, that collecting data on teachers would not be intended for monitoring and punishing the educators — but rather to help develop the school system by answering essential questions.
“What role do teachers have in Finland? What is the quality of teachers like? How much does it vary by region? How strongly is it connected to learning differences?”
He added that Finland is “an ideal country for researching these questions and for evidence-based decision-making” because of the country’s long-established statistical and registry data system.
These datasets could be combined with information on test performance and teaching, Chetty said, making it possible to track the development of learning outcomes between schools as well as evaluating the effects of changes to the school system.
“It would serve both in identifying problems and addressing them,” he added.
