DAY TWO IN HELSINKI

Finland’s success in building a world-beating education system has been a matter of “decades and not centuries,” and the same holds true for South Korea and several other countries that rank high in international comparisons. So said Andreas Schleicher of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, who addressed the second day of the “Teacher Quality” conference in Helsinki, Finland, sponsored by the Pearson Foundation and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Even more “dramatic” than Finland’s top ranking, he added, is the fact that there’s only 4% variance between Finland’s schools, so parents “know they will get good results regardless of the school.” So while some countries “talk equity” in delivering education, Finland “delivers equity.”

Mr. Schleicher heads the Indicators and Analysis Division of the OECD’s Directorate of Education, which recently produced the organization’s annual “Education at a Glance” report, which is packed with detailed data tables and analysis. Several delegates joked with Mr. Schleicher that at 472 pages, the report requires a very long glance to fully consume. He laughed.

The conference, which brings together educators from the U.S. and around the world, also heard Mr. Schleicher explain how different types of jobs have fared in OECD countries over the past few decades. While there have declines in “routine manual” and “non-routine manual” jobs, the steepest decline since 1990 has been in “routine cognitive” jobs – skills that can be described to a computer or a worker in a lower-cost country, so these sorts of jobs have been most at risk in richer countries. The types of jobs that have seen an increase in numbers are “non-routine analytical” and “non-routine interactive” occupations.

Research by the OECD has also found that teachers do respond positively to feedback and appraisal, a finding that Mr. Schleicher said dispels the image that teachers don’t react well to such feedback. Yet there is very little of such feedback in practice. He concluded by reminding the audience that benchmarks are the key to educational results. “One of the best indicators of success is: ‘Does this country have a good definition of what good performance is?’”

Earlier in the day, conference-goers visited Nokia headquarters in Espoo, just outside downtown Helsinki, where they saw demonstrations of some of Nokia’s latest devices and programs. One such program, Nokia Education Delivery, provides videos and other instructional material through handsets, and from there onto larger viewing devices, to developing areas of the world including Tanzania, Chile and the Philippines. A teacher might set a timer to download the video into a handset the night before, when phone rates are lower, and then show it the next day.

Kirsi Sormunen, Nokia’s vice president for Sustainability Operations, told the group that she remembers trying to convince investors that there would one day be 100 million mobile phones in the world. Today, there are about 4 billion mobile subscriptions globally, and that number is projected to rise to 5 billion by 2015. Nokia has a 36% to 38% global share in mobile devices, she said, and is now shifting its focus into being a “solutions business” and not only a handset manufacturer.

The conference broke into two groups after lunch to visit two schools, the Ressu Comprehensive School for students aged 7 to 15, and the Ressu Upper Secondary School for the 16-18 age range.