{"id":3673,"date":"2013-04-26T08:17:40","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T07:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=3673"},"modified":"2013-04-26T08:17:40","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T07:17:40","slug":"finns-come-bottom-of-an-educational-league-table-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2013\/04\/26\/finns-come-bottom-of-an-educational-league-table-at-last\/","title":{"rendered":"Finns come bottom of an educational league table at last"},"content":{"rendered":"

After tireless investigation, Department for Education apparatchiks have at last found an educational league table that those bothersome Finns come bottom in. \u00a0 It's in a recent report from Unicef:\u00a0Child well-being in rich countries: a comparative overview<\/a>; Innocenti Report Card 11. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Fig 3.1a (page 17) shows comparative pre-school enrolment rates, and Finland props up the table at ~73%. \u00a0The UK is at 96%, vaguely near the top. \u00a0Huzzar! \u00a0\u00a0How pleased Mr Gove must have been when he was told all this. \u00a0Awkwardly, however, the UK is a dismal bottom of Fig 3.1b: participation in further education. \u00a0It also does not do well in Fig 3.2 (educational achievement by age 15) where it is placed only 11th, with guess who at the top: those ****** Finns again.<\/p>\n

All is not what it seems, of course, and Box 2 in the report\u00a0[The Finland Paradox<\/em>] is worth quoting in full to show the methodological issues:<\/p>\n

The fact that Finland has the lowest rate of preschool enrolment (Figure 3.1a) and the highest level of educational achievement (Figure 3.2) might seem to contradict the idea that preschool education is important to success at school. \u00a0But it is perhaps better interpreted as a warning of the care needed in making cross-national comparisons.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

First, compulsory schooling in Finland does not begin until a child is seven years old, which means that the age group on which the preschool enrolment rate is based is the child population between the ages of four and seven (in many other countries it is the child population between the ages of four and five). \u00a0If the preschool enrolment rate were to be re-defined as \u2018the percentage of children enrolled in preschool education in the year before compulsory schooling begins\u2019 then Finland would rank near the top of the table with an enrolment rate approaching 100%.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Second, preschool enrolment rates say nothing about the quality of the education received. \u00a0If it were possible to measure quality, then it is likely that Finland would again be found towards the top of the table. \u00a0This prediction is based on the fact that Finland spends considerably more than the OECD average on early years care and education, has exceptionally high minimum qualification requirements for preschool teaching staff, and the highest standards of staff-to-child ratios of any advanced economy (1:4 for children under three years old, and 1:7 for children between 4 and 6).<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Most commentators on Finland\u2019s outstanding record of educational achievement cite the quality of the country\u2019s early years education.<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Indeed. \u00a0Judging by recent comments, Ofsted<\/a> understands this. \u00a0 I whiled away a train journey reading this report; highly recommended \u2013 and not just for civil servants looking for better news for their masters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After tireless investigation, Department for Education apparatchiks have at last found an educational league table that those bothersome Finns come bottom in. \u00a0 It's in a recent report from Unicef:\u00a0Child well-being in rich countries: a comparative overview; Innocenti Report Card...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}