On 28 March was the day when the country findings were presented to a great congregation of education and learning experts of Finland at Tekes headquarters, hosted by Mr Pekka Ollikainen of Tekes Learning Solutions Programme.
The objective of the day was to discuss the trends and signals in the five countries - what will the learning and educations scenario look like 5-10 years from now and to discuss what are the opportunities for Finland Secondly, we discussed the Finnish narrative in the learning and education space - what should we do in order to make Finland a world leader and enable her to capitalise on the existing brand.
The questions for group discussions were:
1.What are the common trends that
are changing the education and learning landscape?
2.What are the most exciting
opportunities you heard?
3.What are the Finnish strengths
that can be leveraged within these opportunities?
4.What kind of collaborative
partnerships would be needed to meet the new opportunities?
PROJECT FINDINGS
Despite the differences between the studied countries, certain trends and phenomena are common for all of them: need for education reform, need to increase the quality of teacher training, increased private sector presence because of government's inability to meet the changing requirements not only financially but also content-wise, digitalisation, need to increase industry cooperation and up-skilling and re-skilling of adult learners. - It was interesting to identify so many common factors between developed countries and emerging markets, and with very different educational systems, for that matter.
Japan with its rapidly aging society, facing strong changes in the traditional life long employment at one company and slowing economic growth, has need for educational reforms to meet with the up-skilling and re-skilling of the aging popular in the space on non formal environment. Lifelong employment is not any more guaranteed and the Japanese need to be prepared and coached to face this change. Traditionally the employing corporates used to impart the life-long learnig opportunities but that is not any more the situation. The demographic quotient seems to be the key driving factor in Japan.
Digitalisation, gamification and personalised learning plans are coming strongly in K-12 and in higher education. Japan also needs to open up more internationally. Finnish teacher training in particular is highly regarded in Japan. The high competitiveness between individuals and the need to be successful from early age are still there, but according to the study this reality is changing and the bigger picture needs to be taken into account by developing more equal opportunities for children and for adult learners, too.
USA with a very fragment educational system (there are 52 state level educational systems) is facing diverse challenges in creating more uniform systems and common core curricula and more standardized measurement systems.
The main general trends are blended learning, digitalisation with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) phenomenon, open educational resources, common core curriculum and personalised learning and the use of social media as learning platform. Interestingly, the corporate learning trends seems to match very much with the K-12 trends.
USA on one hand has many really progressive, state-of-the art schools but it also has a big number of schools with poorly performing students. One of the major bottlenecks, which also applies to the other countries studied, is the teacher training. In the US teacher career is not seen as a lucrative one and therefore the teacher material and also motivation are not very good.
New business models are evolving in the changing scenario (eg. trends towards Social Media Business models) and also private funding is entering more into the pictures. Edutech companies and publishers and analytics companies are mushrooming and challenging the traditional business models.
China as a big emerging market is facing a multitude of challenges but also offering various opportunities. China has launched in 2010 a National Plan for Medium and Longterm Education and Development reform (a 10 year programme) focusing on life long learning, targeting to rural areas and disadvantageous segments, improving overall quality and undertaking systemic reform.
The working population is still increasing for some time and currently the percentage of degree holders in China is still low. However, today is has become almost mandatory to acquire some diploma level skills on top of the university degree as the working life requirements have rapidly changed, demanding more versatile skill sets. World Bank is currently carrying out a study to better match the gap between industry needs and what the education sector provides - again the same phenomenon than in the other countries.
Shanghai area as such is a very progressive educational hub with state-of-the art schools and progressive teacher training methologies being applied. In the metropolitan areas of China the modern trends like online and mobile learning and digitalisation are happening but the vast rural China faces a completely different reality. According to the study, a lot of material is available online but a common platform or sharing tool is missing. There is still also a lot room for improving the technology aided learning.
India is another example of a densely populated emerging countries but with a unique demographic quotient: almost 50 per cent of the Indians are below 25 years. The British gave their educational system in India but currently the rapidly growing and evolving market needs badly a reform not only in K-12 but also in higher education and in skills development. India has around 300 universities with over 22 000 affiliated colleges of various quality, producing annually xxxx graduates. India also faces a major language related challenge: the Indian constitution recognises 22 languages and even if English is quite widely spoken, even at higher education level other languages are used and needed.
For India to keep up with her GDP growth it is mandatory to train and upskill 350 million Indians by 2020 - a huge task which the government cannot handle on its own. India's big metrocities have some state-of-the art schools and universities but again, as in China, the rural areas lack the basic school infrastructure and teacher absenteism is a major hurdle. Teaching career is not lucrative because of low salaries and almost non-existing career path.
India needs a lot of private and foreign participation not only in the funding but also in systemic development and expertise in the space of formal education. The Human Resource Development Ministry of India has initiated a very ambitious initiate of connecting xxxx villages in India with broadband connections, enabling distant learning in the remote areas.
Skills development is a major challenge but also an opportunity for foreign collaborators to help India to bridge the gap. On hand, India need to be able to create more industrial and manufacturing jobs and needs skilled manpower, but on the other hand India faces also the challenge of only around 30 per cent of undergraduates being directly employable. Currently the employeers need to either provide them inhouse training for an average 6-month period, or to outsource the skills development to third parties. The undergraduates are very young by the Finnish standards (20-21 years) and they seldom have any work experience and hence need to be trained starting all the way from soft skills.
Other trends in India are life long learning, digitalisation and mobile learning.
Russia was the third emerging market in our study. Again, there are similar trends there: inclusion of rural and less priviledged segments of society, gap between corporate needs and educational outcomes, online learning and a strong need to enhance life long learning. The Russian educational system has opened up for international cooperation. The Russian government has launched an Innovative Economy Strategy 2020, indicating clear changes in policy making.
New educational standards are being introduced and at the same time more resources are allocated in including more of the vast population in the initiatives, making good education more accessible. Russia has several state-of-the-art innovative educational institutes but again faces the rural challenge.
According to the study, the vocational education system lags behind which offers opportunities for foreign collaborations. Introduction of National Qualification Framework in under discussions but there is no holistic approach the reforms needed.
The country summaries will soon appear on www.finnode.fi - due to summer holiday season there may be some delay!
