In an effort to understand what all the fuss is about, a group of 31 principals and executive members travelled to Finland in the last holidays. We visited schools in Kokkola (with Superintendent Peter Johnson) for the first week seeing a wide variety of schools ( music, language specialities, Swedish language school etc ) that had incredible resourcing & facilities and then spent time in some Helsinki schools.

The size & shape of classrooms varied, but many of the classes were organised in rows and they adhered to a flexible timetable. Trust was the key concept. We trust our teachers to meet the needs of our students…that is their responsibility, we trust our students to engage in learning and act appropriately and by and large they did. On the whole, with the younger students particularly, after a 45 minute lesson they went outside to play and they did that regardless of the weather. There were lots more learnings, but I’d personally recommend a visit to another system to everyone…it questions your beliefs & practices &/or re-affirms your own beliefs and certainly shows what a quality system we do have.