Posted on 08/21/2013 8:34:53 PM PDT by TexGrill
SINGAPORE: The current buzz phrase in the Republic's education system, "every school is a good school", is in fact the principle on which the Finnish education model was built over the last four decades.
But as Singapore strives to realise this vision, Finland's widely praised education system is being challenged because of an increasingly diverse student population, said the country's Minister for Education and Science Krista Kiuru.
In an interview with TODAY, Ms Kiuru also responded to doubts about her country's education system, given the high number of jobless youths. The solution does not lie in changing the education system but in spurring economic growth and creating jobs in an economy which has been weighed down by the euro-zone malaise, she said.
Ms Kiuru, 39, was in town on Tuesday for a day to visit Rulang Primary School and met several Singapore officials, including Director-General of Education Ho Peng and Senior Parliamentary Secretary Sim Ann.
It was the first study trip by a Finnish Education Minister to the Republic. Singapore's Ministry of Education said on its Facebook page that Ms Kiuru was here to "learn more about the Singapore education system and explore further opportunities for both education systems to learn from each other".
Ms Kiuru's delegation consisted of educational technology experts and business leaders, including Mr Peter Vesterbacka, Chief Marketing Officer of Rovio, the company behind the Angry Birds game. Singapore was one of the stops, along with Malaysia and Indonesia, of their four-day visit to Asia.
Ms Kiuru said she was here to "learn from the best of the best" on using technologies in learning and to look for innovative teaching methods.
(Excerpt) Read more at channelnewsasia.com ...
Finland has a more unique problem. Once you get outside of the capital city or any of the next five biggest towns.....you are in the boonies. And there just aren’t that many open jobs for youths in the boonies.
The school system isn’t the problem.
The problem is the ‘increasingly diverse’ part of the equation.
Muslim and black immigrants come from countries where the average IQ is between 70 and 85. It’s never going to work, just like in the USA.
I’ll never understand why once-homogenous countries would allow incompatible cultures to immigrate there.
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