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second reason is linked with teacher professionalism. If a teacher can have a difficult student from her class removed, she can secure for herself a less stressful future in her work.

Finnish teachers have got a strong union, and it has taken a very negative stance towards educational integration (OAJ, 1989). Teachers, like all other professional groups, have step by step achieved more power in the affairs of local municipalities at the cost of local political process (Heuru, 2000). This has given teachers more influence in guiding schools in the directions they want schools to go.

third reason for the large proportion of segregated education lies in the Finnish set of values. In Finland, the shift from an agricultural to an industrial society occurred internationally quite late, during the late forties. The industrial phase remained brief, and the new post-industrial society began to emerge during the late sixties. This means that the traditional values of agricultural and industrial societies still prevail in Finland to a greater extent than in many other countries. These traditional values stress overall conformity and tend to reject people who are considered socially deviant. The Finnish traditional set of values also manifests itself in the internationally high proportions of past sterilization of people with disabilities, high proportion of disabled people in institutions, or in the exceptionally high frequency of fetal screening (Emerson, et. al., 1996; Meskus, 2003).

nternational discussion on inclusion (UN, 1993; Unesco, 1994) was first met in Finland by silence, which continued for several years (e.g. Blom, et al., 1996).

The main focus of special education policy is localized in the neoliberal philosophy of “early intervention”, where problems are found in the pathological conditions of individual children (Plan for Education and Research 2007-2011 by the Ministry of Education). This focus is evident also in the Special Education Strategy report of the Special Education Committee of the Ministry of Education (2007). Furthermore, none of the political parties have raised the issue of inclusive education, outside of the small left wing party, The Left Alliance.

A popular scapegoat for the lack of integration is found in deficits in teacher education (Special Education Committee, 2007). According to this explanation integration is not possible because teachers have not acquired the necessary skills in their education. Antagonists of this explanation underline that current teacher education is fully adequate in this respect and gives readiness for all teachers to include students with disabilities.

First, some large disability organizations, e.g. the Parents’ Association for People with Intellectual Disabilities, The National Council on Disability, and the Finnish Association on People with Physical Disabilities have presented critical statements, not heard previously, on current policy which favours increased placement of students in special classes. These organizations have begun to refer to international goal statements on inclusive education, like the Salamanca statement.

If the change happens it, in all probability, will mean a free fall in the number of special class placements. Inclusive development may thus become materialized as an unintended consequence of a bureaucratic funding reform

Finland is a black sheep in the international movement on inclusive education.

There is a continuous threat of a legitimacy crisis in special education. Until now the threat has been successfully handled first through the means of ignoring the international discussions, statements and policies, and lately by changing the meaning of the concept of inclusion. Instead of inclusion meaning desegregation it is increasingly defined by educational authorities to mean some kind of good teaching in general (Halinen & Järvinen, 2008; Special Education Committee, 2007).

In opposition to inclusion, the official policy promotes early intervention as a main area of development in special education.

The idea of integration, or the principle of the primacy of mainstream class placement in the education of students with special needs, was first expressed in Finland in the report of the Rehabilitation Committee in 1966

The construction of a welfare society meant the widening of public services. A widening professional sector sought new customer groups as clients. One of these groups was people with intellectual and mental disabilities who, until that time, were mainly treated in institutions

ideas of “rehabilitation” launched during the fifties by the International Labour Organization (ILO) now found breeding ground in Finnish society. The change in ideology was revolutionary, and was also noticed by the contemporaries. For example, the Rehabilitation Committee characterized the ideological change as expressing “a new conception of civil rights and human value” (Rehabilitation committee, 1966, 9).

During the educational reform which took place from 1972-1977 the previous dual educational system was superseded by a unified and obligatory nine year comprehensive school, called “peruskoulu”, for all children

Special education achieved great attention in this reform. The special education division was founded in the National Board of Education and two committee reports were published on the organisation of special education in Finland.

The forms of traditional special education were secured but, additionally, the principle of integration was launched. On one side the new concept expressed positive content of the occurring paradigm shift from institutional care to rehabilitation. On the other side it very early expressed its ideological nature as a concept that helped to legitimate the exclusion of disabled people. Integration was considered conditional and depended on the “readiness” of the person.

A new profession of special education teachers, professionals without a grade level class responsibility, was established.

In this so called “part-time special education” students received individual or group-based support without formal enrolment into special student status. This led to a conflict with the professional union of teachers, OAJ, which declared a lock-out for those positions in the schools which offered them. As a compromise it was at last agreed that the new profession was not allowed to influence reductions in the number of relocations into special classes (Kivirauma, 1989).

The number of special class students in the seventies had increased to about two percent of the overall student population in comprehensive schools (Statistics Finland, 1981).

The two older forms of special education classes, the auxiliary school (Hilfschule) for students with learning difficulties and the “observation classes” for students with emotional and behavioural problems were now superseded by a system which could be characterised as principally a non-categorical system of special education. Local municipalities were now allowed to categorize their special education classes as they wanted, though most of the older terms still survived.

First, strong categorical features came from state funding, which portioned out state support on an individual basis in accordance with the level of disability.

Second, local municipalities began to develop new, more medical, special education categories.

Third, the special teacher education programs continued to use categorical labels such as “special teacher for the maladjusted”, “adapted education” or “training school education”. Training school education referred to students with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities which were now at last entitled to enter comprehensive school.

During the eighties the proportion of special class students in comprehensive schools grew approximately from two to three percent (Statistics Finland, 1989).

An important characteristic of these new popular categories was their medical nature. New diagnoses such as “dysphasia”, “autism”, and “ADHD” attained popularity at the expense of older categories such as mental retardation

A common feature of the new popular diagnoses was their obscurity. Instead of a clear-cut collection of symptoms they resembled more vague metaphors.

This medical turn can be seen as the late fruit of the rehabilitation paradigm which was adopted twenty years earlier.

The new categorizations were more merciful as compared to the older ones because children were no longer seen as “bad” or “stupid” but as “sick” and in need of rehabilitation (Conrad & Schneider, 1980/1992). This change in perception from “badness” to “sickness” also helped to give new legitimacy to special education.

proportion of comprehensive school students transferred into special classes now grew up to four percent (Table 2). Students with severe and profound intellectual disabilities were now also accepted into comprehensive school in 1997 as the final small disability group thus far marginalized to the outside.

The last ten years have witnessed a rapid growth of segregated special education in Finland

Other supports, such as the increasing use of part-time special education have not been effective in reducing this development

the number of integrated students has also grown. This was due to a change in funding legislation in 1998, which also guaranteed additional state support for those special education students not removed into special classes.

The relative proportion of students in special schools was 2.0% in 1998 and 1.4% in 2007

The slight fall in special school placements seems to be mainly technical: many special schools have been administratively united to mainstream schools. The number of special schools has dropped to about 160. Most of them probably were schools for students with mild disabilities (former auxiliary schools).

The least number of placements are in the Swedish speaking part of Finland. This may indicate a cultural influence from Sweden where special class placements are much rarer than in Finland

The significant distances in the countryside of Finland explain why integration is more common in rural areas.

it is still justified to speak of the five Nordic countries as a rather distinct group. However, social‐inclusive policies have also clearly been reformulated and delimited, related to a strengthening of the economic‐utilitarian functions of education and a weakening of central education governance

Special education teachers, are important in the process of diagnosis and intervention, but it is not up to them alone to identify students. Each school has a group of staff that meets twice a month in order to assess the success of individual classrooms and potential concerns within classrooms. This group, which is comprised of the principal, the school nurse, the special education teacher, the school psychologist, a social worker and the classrooms’ teachers, determines whether problems exist, as well as how to rectify them. If students are considered to need help beyond what the school can provide, the school helps the family find professional intervention.

Those students classified as having more intensive learning difficulties, including severely delayed development, severe handicaps, autism, dysphasia, and visual or hearing impairment (1.2% of the school population in 2010) were educated in a special education school.

there is little disparity in performance among Finnish schools.

The country with the second-lowest rate of variance, Canada, still had a rate more than double that of Finland.

Finland has also been successful in uncoupling socioeconomic status from academic success or failure: there is only about a 6.8% variance based on students’ socioeconomic backgrounds, and a 23.2% variance based on a school’s socioeconomic background.

By 2003, 22 of every 1000 Finnish workers were involved in the research and development sector, a figure almost three times higher than the OECD average, and more than four times higher than in Finland in 1991.   The Finnish economy had undergone a major transformation.

The education system was able to respond to the workforce needs created by the events of the early 90s because of a series of extensive reforms that had begun in 1972, which had changed the face of teaching and learning in Finland.

began with creation of a unified comprehensive education structure and national curriculum guidelines.

Accompanying the restructuring of schools was a restructuring of teacher education, with responsibility for teacher training moving to Finland’s universities, where Finland’s other most valued professional had long been trained. Other measures were also aimed at improving the quality of the Finnish teaching force. 

The Finnish story is not unlike that of Singapore, in that eventual success was the result of a long, slow and rather steady process, not the result of a single development, policy, program or administration.  Each step in the development of the modern Finnish education system built sensibly on those that went before.

These reforms and others, described in more detail in other sections on Finland on this site, made Finland’s economic survival in the 1990s possible.

if there is a key to the success of the Finnish system, it is the quality of their teachers and the trust that the Finnish people have vested in them.  Some would argue that this, in some sense, makes the Finnish case irrelevant to the decisions to be made by other countries, because they lack the culture in which such a high value is placed on teachers and teaching. 

when one examines the specific policies that the Finns have adopted with respect to the recruitment, selection, training, supervision and support of teachers, and the way in which the intense focus on teacher quality is matched to the Finnish approach to accountability, curriculum, instruction and school management, then one begins to see that teacher quality in Finland is not the result of an unmatchable culture, but rather of a specific highly integrated system of policies and structures that other nations can emulate to produce a culture that is no less supportive of teachers and no less likely to result in superior student performance.

Every four years, the government prepares a development plan for education and research, using that plan as a vehicle to make sure that the Finnish system is constantly adapting to the changing needs, including the economic needs, of the country.

Though Finland’s population is very homogenous (more than 98% are descended from Finnish stock), that is changing and the Finns know that their education system will have to change to adapt to these changing demographics.

Lower-skilled work is also being exported to other parts of Europe and a greater proportion of Finnish jobs will require ever-more-sophisticated skills, another factor that is accounted for in Finnish education planning.

The government’s stated priorities going forward include reducing class sizes, enhancing remediation and special needs teaching, improving teachers’ working conditions, establishing new opportunities for teachers to develop their professional skills, and overhauling adult education and training

it took decades for the Finns to build the system whose fruits they are now enjoying.