Finland
This chapter provides an overview of the educational and employment outcomes and well-being of young people in Finland. After briefly outlining the economic context of the past decade, it compares the educational and employment performance of young Finns with that of young people across OECD countries. The chapter then describes the size and composition of the population of young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEETs), paying particular attention to how their outlook and health compares to other youth. The chapter concludes with discussing the comparative length of inactivity of youth in Finland and the risk factors associated with remaining a NEET for an extended period.
The paper is the first in a series of two papers mapping young people’s environmental sustainability competence in EU and OECD countries that were prepared as background for the forthcoming OECD Skills Outlook 2023 publication. The papers are the results of a collaboration between the OECD Centre for Skills and the European Commission - Joint Research Centre (Unit B4) on students’ environmental sustainability competence. The second paper is titled: ‘The environmental sustainability competence toolbox: From leaving a better planet to our children to leaving better children for our planet’.
While Finland’s foreign-born population remains small by international standards, growth has been amongst the fastest in the OECD. Finland’s foreign-born population have lower employment rates than native-born Finns, and women, in particular, are struggling to integrate and face incentives to stay in the home. Indeed, the employment gap among those arriving from outside the European Union is among the largest in the OECD. This risks long-term implications for the integration of their children, many of whom are struggling to thrive in the Finnish school system. Large inflows of asylum seekers in 2015 put integration squarely on the agenda, and Finland developed a number of innovative integration policies in response. Yet, numbers have since fallen dramatically, raising questions of how to respond to the needs of a large cohort without scaling up the integration system on a permanent basis. This review, the second in a series on the skills and labour market integration of immigrants and their children, provides an assessment of these and other challenges. It includes a holistic assessment of Finland’s integration services – such as the new modular integration training, and the Social Impact Bond – as well as challenges related to settlement, early labour market contact and workplace segregation. An earlier review in the series looked at integration policies in Sweden (2016).
Most people spend their evenings kicking back with a book or whatever’s on Netflix. In Finland, they’re teaching themselves artificial intelligence (AI). Computer scientist Teemu Roos talks about the easy-to-follow massive online course on machine learning he designed with tech firm Reaktor. And which the Finnish government bank-rolled. Teemu Roos is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki.
In general, Finland performs above the OECD average with most of the ECEC outcome indicators. On socio-demographic and labour market outcomes, the fertility rates are slightly higher than the average countries; and maternal employment rates are in line with the average or above. On child outcome indicators, there is very little child poverty; Finnish students at the age of 15 perform well on PISA assessments for reading, mathematics and science; school survival rates are high; and young people (15 to 19 years) are most often either in school or work. Areas for reflection on possible policy change with an international comparative perspective include: improving gender equality in earnings for women; increasing ECEC enrolment rates for children at ages three and five; and improving health outcomes for students at age 15.
Finland’s ECEC workforce has several strengths, such as a high qualification level of staff with teaching responsibilities, advanced professional development opportunities and favourable working environments. Staff with teaching responsibilities are well educated and trained with high initial qualification requirements. There is broad provision of initial education, with full-time and parttime programmes provided publicly and privately. Professional development is mandatory for all staff; and training costs are shared between individual staff members, the government and employers. Professional development is offered by a range of providers, with different modes, on a variety of topics. Working conditions in terms of staff-child ratio are among the best of OECD countries.
This policy brief was developed by the Secretariat of the OECD Network of Economic Regulators (NER) and is based on examples of practice submitted by members of the NER. It reviews emergency measures taken by economic regulators during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure continuity of services in network sectors, as well as to adjust regulatory practices and adapt governance arrangements. It identifies long-term questions and implications of the crisis with regard to market structure, infrastructure investment and the role of regulators.
Lucy Crehan, education author and former teacher, spent months visiting classrooms in countries and education systems that rank highest in the Programme for International Student Assessment (or PISA). She wanted to learn first-hand what teachers in these systems are doing differently for their students to perform so well. On this episode of TopClass, Lucy joins us to discuss her travels and the ways in which countries like Japan and Finland approach education.
This chapter discusses and analyses the factors behind successful and failed local government reforms in Finland. The reforms investigated include the municipal merger reform, health care reform and grant system reform, pursued by the Finnish government during 2011-15. The reforms are studied from the reform context, timing, scope and reform design angles. The main observation is that the successful reforms have been prepared by experts and civil servants, and political decision-making became involved only at the last phase. Also, it seems important that a single ministry was in charge of the reform. The failed reforms were tightly steered politically from the beginning, without clear political agreement on the process and target of the reform.
Staff qualifications, initial education and professional development contribute to enhancing pedagogical quality, which is – ultimately – highly associated with better child outcomes. It is not the qualification per se that has an impact on child outcomes but the ability of better qualified staff members to create a high-quality pedagogic environment. Key elements of high staff quality are the ways in which staff involve children, stimulate interaction with and between children, and use diverse scaffolding strategies.
Common challenges countries face in enhancing quality in ECEC workforce include: 1) improving staff qualifications; 2) securing a high-quality workforce supply; 3) retaining the workforce; 4) workforce and leadership development; and 5) managing the quality of workforce in private ECEC provision.