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Education researchers share proven strategies from neighboring nations for boosting learning outcomes

The Finnish Institute for Educational Research (FIER) at the University of Jyväskylä has published a research review on changes in comprehensive school students’ competencies and various associated factors. The review also examines consequential education policy reforms made in other Nordic countries and in Estonia. The purpose of the investigation is to collect information about reasons for the declining PISA results and present well-proven structural solutions, pedagogical methods as well as practices related to school’s operation culture and management, which have been implemented in these countries in order to improve learning outcomes.

PISA studies (Programme for International Student Assessment) concerning 15-year-olds are coordinated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and they yield international comparative data on learning outcomes and the state of education at three-year intervals. The declining PISA results in recent decades have sparked much discussion and led to education policy changes in many Nordic countries.

The report focuses its analysis of learning outcomes to PISA results because they are the only common metric across all Nordic countries and Estonia. It states:

“However, PISA results do not directly indicate the success of the education system; they only reflect students’ current skills in literacy, mathematics or science. Therefore, national learning assessments and longitudinal follow-ups with the same students are also necessary in order that Finnish education can be developed based on long-term data collection.”

The report outlines similarities in education policies across the other Nordic countries and Estonia. The publication compiles information on factors affecting learning outcomes and the related education policy solutions implemented in Nordic countries and Estonia from the late 2010s to early 2020s.

The investigation was conducted as a meta-review based mainly on research literature and policy documents, supplemented with written interviews of researchers and ministry-level decision-makers. The publication also includes developmental recommendations on the student, school and national level in order to improve learning outcomes in Finland.

Recommendations for action in Finland

Here are some examples of recommendations for action that Nestori Kilpi, PhD researcher, Najat Ouakrim-Soivio, Associate Professor, and Taina Saarinen, Research Professor, submit for consideration. They emerge from the key research literature and policy documents of the comparator countries:

  • Establishing an education panel: A cooperation forum where researchers, civil servants and politicians discuss education policy and the utilisation and dissemination of research knowledge in the field.
  • The establishment of a national test task pool for various teaching subjects, from which schools and teachers could order sufficiently differentiating task series for assessment purposes in order to determine the competence level of their students. The task series would be based on the central curricular objectives and contents defined for each subject at the end of the sixth grade and also at the end of comprehensive school. The task series with related assessment instructions would guide teachers to more uniform use of assessment criteria, in addition to which the tasks would also concretise for the students and their guardians the competence-level requirements in different subjects. The use of the task series, like also the students’ test scores, would be available only to the teachers themselves so that they could not be used for between-school comparisons or ranking lists.
  • Students’ competence in mathematics, mother tongue and literature, and A1 language would be assessed systematically in the spring of Year 7 or autumn of Year 8. This way the teachers as well as the students and their guardians would get a grasp, well before the end of comprehensive school, on the student’s competence level at the moment. In addition, it would be possible to follow the student’s progress in school subjects requiring the above-mentioned basic skills.

The entire list of action recommendations is presented in the online version of this release (Oppimistuloskehitys ja koulutuspoliittiset toimet Pohjoismaissa ja Virossa 2010-luvulta 2020-luvun alkuun, in Finnish only).

The research review was conducted in cooperation with the EDUCA Flagship, and has been funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.