Professor Paul Andrews at the Department of Mathematics and Science Education has for the last several years trying to understand what has been known as the 'Finnish Education Miracle'. Are the results Finnish students produce on standardized mathematics tests a result of a schooling system superior to others?

Many readers will know of some of the large scale international tests of students’ mathematics achievement. TIMSS, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, and PISA, the Programme of International Student Assessment, have been making headlines for almost twenty years. Both are undertaken periodically, TIMSS every four years since 1995 and PISA every three years since 2000.

Paul Andrews

PISA aims to look beyond standard classroom mathematics towards those situations people face when going about their daily lives. This ambition has two consequences. Firstly, PISA test items are necessarily text-based in order that the real-world context of the question can be explained. Secondly, the mathematics embedded in the text is typically less sophisticated than that found in the more traditional curriculum based test items of TIMSS.

The results of these tests have created international league tables; much hand-wringing on the part of governments concerned that their economic competitors seem to be doing better than they are; and revisions to national curricula, teacher education programmes and assessment procedures. Yet, the evidence provided by such tests is flimsy as the basis for such decision making.

Over the last few years Paul Andrews has been trying to understand one particular educational system and the impact its performance on PISA has had internationally. Finland topped the PISA league tables in 2000 and has continued to do so since. These successes led to much international interest and many thousands of visitors to Helsinki to try to determine the causes of this success. In this respect there is ample evidence that the contributory factors to the very low between school variance - that is, there is little discernible difference between the PISA scores of each participating Finnish school when compared with other countries - include a genuine comprehensive school system, a high-status teacher education programme, in-class special educational needs support and the fact that teachers are trusted by all strata of society.

However, Finland’s performance on the two TIMSS on which it participated was modest and has been largely ignored not only by the Finns themselves but the international community. In short, a myth has developed presenting the Finns as high achievers when, in fact, Finnish students’ competence with the mathematics necessary, say, to continue to higher education is limited. Paul Andrews’ conclusions, having analysed, by means of several different lenses, the video-recordings of Finnish mathematics teaching are several. The quality of Finnish mathematics teaching is unlikely to explain the high performance of Finnish students on PISA. However, it is likely to explain the modest performance on TIMSS. Finnish PISA success is more likely, Andrews speculates, to be a consequence of a deep-seated cultural reverence for reading rather than anything teachers do in their mathematics classrooms. Finland has one of the densest library networks in the world and Finns borrow more library books than anyone else. This tradition reflects a Lutheran tradition in which sacraments could not have been taken by an illiterate. Consequently, there is not, nor has been for centuries, an illiterate underclass in Finnish society. One consequence of this, shared with other Nordic countries like Sweden and Norway, is that Finland is one of a small number of countries whose PISA scores exceeds their TIMSS. In other words, while Finns are demonstrably good readers, their competence with formal mathematics is limited.

The publications in which Paul Andrews discusses these issues are:





