The Finnish experience shows that consistent focus on equity and cooperation — not choice and competition — can lead to an education system where all children learn well.

This book is about Finland and how the Finns built a trust-based education culture that helped to transform their educational system from mediocre in the 1980s to one of the models of educational excel- lence and equity today.

The main message of this book is that there is another way to improve education systems, one that is different from the market-based reform ideology mentioned above. This other way includes improving the teaching force, limiting student testing to a necessary min- imum, placing responsibility and trust before accountability, investing in equity in education, and handing over school- and district-level leader- ship to experienced education professionals. These are common educa- tion policy themes in some of the high-performing countries — Finland among them — in the 2018 PISA of the OECD (2019a, 2019b).

One of the key messages of this book is that unlike many other contemporary systems of education, the Finnish system has not been in- fected by market-based education reform models, such as tougher competition between schools over enrollment, standardization of teach- ing and learning in schools, and using high-stakes standardized tests to measure schools’ performance and hold them accountable. The main reason for this is that the education community in Finland has remained unconvinced that these globally fashionable directions for improving education would be good for Finnish schools.

This book is meant to emphasize that there is another way to improve education rather than those fashionable models offered by international organizations and consultants. I want to convince you that, yes, we can learn from one another, but we need to be mindful as well. Finland has inspired scores of educators in other countries to think more deeply about their own schools and cultures. There are lessons in this book that others can learn from us, just as Finland has been inspired by educators and school systems around the world and learned from them. This is where the real hope is for a better tomorrow.

This book speaks against those who believe that the best way to solve chronic problems in many education systems is to take control away from school boards and give it to those who might run schools more effectively, by charters, businesses, or other means of privatization. Although there are limits to the ideas that can be transferred from Finland to other nations, certain basic lessons may have general value for other educational systems, such as the practices of building on teacher strengths, securing relaxed and fear-free learning for students, and gradually enhancing trust within educational systems.