Q: What makes Finnish teachers so special? Answer: It’s not brains

When my niece was finishing school in Finland, more than anything else she wanted to become a primary teacher. Despite her genuine interest in teaching she failed to get into a teacher education programme at the University of Helsinki. She was smart and bright, yet she was not deemed qualified.

This is not unusual. Finnish universities regularly turn away applicants such as my niece to try again or to study something else. In fact, Finnish primary school teacher education programmes that lead to an advanced, research-based degree are so popular among young Finns that only one in 10 applicants is accepted each year. Those lucky students then have to study for five to six years before they are allowed to teach a class of their own.

There are those who think that the tough race to become a teacher in Finland is the key to good teaching and thereby to improving student achievement. Because only 10% of applicants pass the rigorous admission system, the story goes, the secret is to recruit new teachers from the top decile of available candidates. This has led many governments and organisations to find new ways to get the best and the brightest young talents into the teaching profession. Various fast-track teacher preparation initiatives that lure smart young university graduates to teach for a few years have mushroomed. Smarter people make better teachers … or do they?

Who exactly are those who were chosen to become primary teachers in Finland ahead of my niece? Let’s take closer look at the academic profile of the first-year cohort selected at the University of Helsinki. The entrance test has two phases. All students must first take a national written test. The best performers in this are invited on to the second phase, to take the university’s specific aptitude test. At the University of Helsinki, 60% of the accepted 120 students were selected on a combination of their score on the entrance test and their points on the subject exams they took to complete their upper-secondary education; 40% of students were awarded a study place based on their score on the entrance test alone.

Last spring, 1,650 students took the national written test to compete for those 120 places at the University of Helsinki. Applicants received between one and 100 points for the subject exams taken to earn upper-secondary school leaving diplomas. A quarter of the accepted students came from the top 20% in academic ability and another quarter came from the bottom half. This means that half of the first-year students came from the 51- to 80-point range of measured academic ability. You could call them academically average. The idea that Finland recruits the academically “best and brightest” to become teachers is a myth. In fact, the student cohort represents a diverse range of academic success, and deliberately so.

If Finnish teacher educators thought that teacher quality correlates with academic ability, they would have admitted my niece and many of her peers with superior school performance. Indeed, the University of Helsinki could easily pick the best and the brightest of the huge pool of applicants each year, and have all of their new trainee teachers with admirable grades.

But they don’t do this because they know that teaching potential is hidden more evenly across the range of different people. Young athletes, musicians and youth leaders, for example, often have the emerging characteristics of great teachers without having the best academic record. What Finland shows is that rather than get “best and the brightest” into teaching, it is better to design initial teacher education in a way that will get the best from young people who have natural passion to teach for life.

The teaching profession has become a fashionable topic among education reformers around the world. In England, policy-makers from David Cameron down have argued that the way to improve education is to attract smarter people to be teachers. International organisations such as the OECD and McKinsey & Company, Sir Michael Barber for Pearson, and in the US, Joel Klein, former New York education chancellor now working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, have all claimed that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers. These are myths and should be kept away from evidence-informed education policies and reforms.

A good step forward would be to admit that the academically best students are not necessarily the best teachers. Successful education systems are more concerned about finding the right people to become career-long teachers. Oh, and what happened to my niece? She applied again and succeeded. She graduated recently and will be a teacher for life, like most of her university classmates.

• Pasi Sahlberg is visiting professor at Harvard graduate school of education and author of Finnish Lessons 2.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland?

Teach For Finland? Why it won’t happen.

You’ve certainly heard of Teach For America but you may not know that its founder, Wendy Kopp, now runs a related organization called Teach For All which is a network of TFA-like school reform organizations in a few dozen countries around the world. One place there isn’t such an affiliate is in Finland. Why that is so is explained in the following post by Finnish educator and scholar Pasi Sahlberg, who is one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and educational practices. Sahlberg is the author of the best-selling “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?” — originally published in 2011 and just republished in an updated edition – which details how Finland created its world-class school system. The former director general of Finland’s Center for International Mobility and Cooperation, Sahlberg is now a visiting professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has written a number of important posts for this blog, including “What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools,” and “What the U.S. can’t learn from Finland about ed reform.” Here is a new piece that debunks some myths about teachers and teacher preparation. You can find more about him here on his website.

By Pasi Sahlberg

If you ask anyone why kids do better in school in Finland than other countries, you will probably hear one answer more often anything else: They have great teachers. It is true that Finnish teachers are well prepared, widely respected and commonly trusted professionals. But are education systems successful just because of great teachers? Many would emphatically say “yes.” I would say, however, “not so fast!”

Many of us are delighted that teachers are now recognized as key players in efforts to improve the quality of education systems. The International Summit on Teaching Profession, an annually organized gathering of education ministers and union leaders around the world, is just one of the new forums where teachers are at the center of attention. We now know more and understand better teachers’ lives and their work as a result of increased academic research and global surveys done by international organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Education International (EI). However, the extent that teachers can make a difference in student learning in school remains a question with different answers.

In Finland, entry into teacher education is one of the most competitive among any field in higher education. Since all teachers must hold advanced academic degrees and they are therefore relatively well-paid and protected professionals, teaching is an attractive career choice among young Finns. And yes, teachers in Finland also have good working conditions in schools and a moderate teaching load by international standards. According to the recent Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) by the OECD, middle school teachers in Finland teach, on average, 21 hours and work 32 hours a week.

A frequently cited claim is that the best-performing education systems recruit their teachers from the pool of brightest graduates. Whatever that means, it’s a myth not supported by evidence. The logic is that the smarter the person entering the teaching profession, the better teacher she or he will become. Getting the best and the brightest into teaching has therefore become a policy mantra repeated in education policies and reforms around the world.

There are those who argue that fast-track teacher preparation models, like Teach For America and its sister organizations in many countries, are justified by referring to more successful education systems like Finland. They say that just as Finland selects its teacher candidates from the best available young people, these alternative teacher preparation programs recruit only the best to become teachers in demanding schools with a notable proportion of disadvantaged children.

Then there are those who go even further, claiming that there are many similarities between the Finnish and TFA conception of teaching. I would argue that these two could not be further apart from one another. Here are three reasons why.

Teacher education vs. short-course preparation. All teachers in Finland must hold a master’s degree either in education (primary school teachers) or in subjects that they teach (lower- and upper-secondary school teachers). Primary school teachers in Finland go through rigorous academic education that normally lasts five to six years and can only be done in one of the research universities that offer teacher education degrees. This advanced academic program includes modules on pedagogy, psychology, neuroscience, curriculum theories, assessment methods, research methods and clinical practical training in teacher training school attached to the university. Subject teachers complete advanced academic studies in their field and combine that with an additional year of an educational program. This approach differs dramatically from the one employed by TFA, requiring only five or six weeks of summer training for college graduates, with limited clinical training in the practice of teaching.

Life-time career vs. short-term experience. Teaching is a competitive career choice in Finland and therefore very popular among upper-secondary school graduates. According to a recent study on the teaching profession in Finland, four out of five teachers are satisfied with their work and just about 9 percent of teachers have left the teaching profession for some other job. In 2012, a Finnish teacher’s career lasted approximately 40 years, while a typical teacher has about 16 years of teaching experience. During their work in school, most teachers – in fact, over 95 percent – are members of the Trade Union of Education in Finland (OAJ), an association of all educators, which belongs to the Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals in Finland (AKAVA). This is strikingly different from TFA corps members who only commit to teach for two years and normally have loose connections to professional communities of teachers. In 2012, a study on teachers in America shows, the typical teacher in the United States was someone in his or her fifth year. By contrast, 20 years ago, the typical teacher in the United States was in his or her sixteenth year.

Social capital vs. human capital in the teaching profession. In Finland, teaching is regarded as a team sport built on teacher collaboration. Teachers are members of professional teams that share the same goals and purposes. Most schools in Finland have both physical space and time for teachers to work together within every school day. School improvement and professional development focus on enhancing personal work and organizational performance and they normally have strong emphasis on teamwork, collaboration with teachers and schools, and shared leadership. Enhancing social capital is as important as improving human capital in Finnish schools. This differs from the logic of the fast-track teacher preparation programs that build on human capital and often undermine the role of social capital, such as professional learning communities and teacher networks, as the critical element of high-quality teaching and learning in school.

It is true that only about 10 percent of those who send an application to primary school teacher education programs in Finnish research universities will be accepted each year. But that doesn’t mean that Finland recruits teacher candidates from the top 10 percent of upper-secondary school graduates. The admission system is designed in a way that it gives all students interested in becoming a teacher an equal starting point. The students that are recruited to academic teacher education programs each year at the University of Helsinki, for example, have surprisingly diverse academic profiles. The typical freshman teacher education student is one who had slightly above average grades as an upper-secondary student and slightly above average scores on the matriculation exam.

Finnish teacher educators don’t think that superior academic performance would necessarily correspond with being a great teacher. Selection to teacher education in Finland focuses on finding those individuals who have the right personality, advanced interpersonal skills, and the right moral purpose to become lifelong educators. TFA is for many a stepping-stone to prestigious careers in law, banking, business, and public policy while in Finland teaching is a lifetime commitment.

And because Finns think of teaching as a high-status profession akin to medicine, law, or engineering, there is no room for Teach For Finland, just as there’s no room for Cure for Finland or any other short cut to trusted professions.