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Mnementh said:
fatslob-:O said:
Not at all a realistic model to strive for because a major factor to Finland's success in their educational system are their demographics. It's rather just an anomaly I'd say ...

According to the latest PISA rankings, we're doing slightly better than Finland but even we don't have such amenities like no homework, very short school hours or a lack of standardized testing ...

For most nations out there, they should not model their educational system after Finland but ideally something like Singapore or Hong Kong because most of the best post-secondary schools absolutely have compulsory standardized testing for post-secondary school program qualifications. Weak students do NOT have a place in higher educational institutions and should not deserve a seat either in that case. Scholars should be encouraged to be hardcore test takers since that is what matters most in universities ...

Inhowfar is Finlands demography special? Looks pretty standard to me:

Which country are you from?

As for Singapore: they do pretty well in recent years and with quite a different schooling system. I am against standardized tests though, this does not help students to think but instead to follow rules and predetermined routine. Makes for good workers, but bad innovators.

As I said, I was from GDR, which had a school system which generally was seen as doing pretty well and  which also had no standardized tests. As far as I know germany as a whole has no standardized testing routine in school to this day and does overall not too bad (better as the US in any case).

We do have standadized tests on the state level though and their merit has been debatable imho... It's not that many but the Haupt- and Realschul graduation tests (wich you also have to take if you attend a Gymnasium (highest tier of german high school*)) as well as certain parts of the Abitur (german A-Levels/graduation, wich permits you to go to a university) are standardized.

 

*We have a split Highschool system. There's three schoolforms with three distinct levels of graduation, the shortest strand being the Hauptschule or 'general school' wich you can graduate after nine years of school at age 15, 'Realschule' wich you graduate after 10 years of school at 16 is the middle option and gives you middle of the road optionas after graduation and the 'Gymnasium', wich you graduate after 12-13 years of school at 17-19 years of age. The Gymnasium graduation, called 'Abitur' is the only one that immediately allows you to apply to a university.

I think the tiered system does create some class divide even though it is supposed to be a meritocracy, the system tends to favor kids from rich or at least intellectual backgrounds, just because these kids tend have an educational headstart because of the resouces that were available to them before school even started.

Germany has been trying to champion earlier entry into school as well as preschool and has launched extensive language and education programs in kindergardens as a counter measure to this inequality. They've also been moving to a more integrated system and many states have started adopting 'Gesamt'- and 'Stadtteil'-schools, wich both serve the purpose of integrating all three highschool strands at the same school and within the same classes in order to lessen the divide and help people acend more freely through the educational system.

'Gymnasuims' tend to stay around though and accumulate rich and gifted students, by virtue of being able to pick and choose who they let attend the school, despite being public schools.

 

Personally I attended a Gymnasium with prolonged school hours (08:00 - 16:00 on most days, some longer), wich was supposed to be a homework-free system. It's not. We still got tons of homework, wich I dodged wherever I could.

We never had multiple choice tests and in fact the teaches used to dunk on them. Instead most of our exams were Essay-based and while there were brief sections of reading comprehension and opportunity to show what was learned in the last months, the focal point was always to apply the knowledge to a new situation and draw your own conclusion. Critical thinking and the importance of cause and effect in larger systems was always a major focus.

Honestly Germany used to do 'bad' at the stadardized 'PISA' tests and priding itself on it's reputation as 'the land of poets and thinkers' as well as their work ethic, completely panicked and screwed up big parts of the school system (switching the graduation system from selected 'advanced courses', wich could be freely and individually chosen, to 'school profiles', wich have every student do a set of mandatory courses depending wich school they attend, for example was a biiiig mistake) making it more focused on arbitrary standarts and less focused on actual learning. It didin't really help with the 'PISA' results either, Germany still sits more or less in the middle of the field.