Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

land’s education system and its students, adding caution and scepticism tothe praise and international attention Finland has received.➢➢➢➢The exam is conducted at the optimal moment in education forFinnish students. At age fifteen, students are at a peak, in their finalyear of comprehensive school. Most experts agree that Finland’sscores would likely fall if the test were offered one year later, afterthe transition to secondary school.Absence of high-stakes testing in Finland removes the anxiety overtest taking. Some suggest that students are excited for the test, seeingit as an opportunity to become part of something special.Extremely high reading scores in Finland contribute to higher testscores in the math and science domains.PISA tests only three core domains which may align with Finnishstudents’ strengths and obscure weaknesses found elsewhere.Dropouts: Outcasts or Disruptive Innovators?Finland’s attitude toward equality and equity resonate with the widernotion that Finland is a culture that values and cultivates consensus. Finnishsociety is extremely homogenous—in race, religion, income and educationbackground. This homogeneity or predominant level of “sameness” inFinland places even greater scrutiny on those individuals who fall outsidethe norm and the mainstream. These outsiders who appear at the extremes,and in Finland, they include the very rich or very poor, racial minorities,and in the case of this briefing, the dropouts.From a cultural perspective, dropouts are individuals who have fallenoutside the mainstream and beyond the reach of the paternalistic state.They are symbols of failure in the system as well as future burdens on societyand the state. Educators see them as lost youth, stragglers lacking motivation,ability—or both. Law enforcement officials see them as truants, loiterersand idlers on city streets and town squares. Economists see them asholes in the tax base, contributing less than their graduate counterparts andcreating added stress on the near-exhausted pension funds. Health care andsocial workers see them as preventable patients adding costs to an alreadyburdened system and more likely to suffer from poor physical health, addiction,domestic troubles, and depression.Despite Finland’s record for success in education, the simple truth isnot all students keep pace in the current system, as designed. The Finnisheducation system establishes a carefully prescribed path from primaryto secondary and then onto higher education. Deviations from this path,however small, may appear all the more significant simply because Finlandis a small and homogenous country whose education system is alreadyso highly regarded. Yet, for a country so committed to equity and sharedresponsibility, Finland’s population of young dropouts is the easily identified“crack” in an otherwise pristine façade. Understanding dropouts as151