English high school - how to choose...?

[onkko]

PISA tests 15 year-olds. Not high-school students. And it's not a competition. But this is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... l_Olympiad

(and there are no Finns in there).

As has been repeated a gazillion times... PISA ranks the average scores of entire populations. Finland has one of the best averages amongst OECD countries (ie the smallest gap between the academically brilliant and the barely literate). It doesn't have the highest achievers. The mathematics core curriculum for compulsory comprehensive education is way off IGCSE. I think short maths in lukio is maybe closer to IGCSE, but probably not quite there either. Maths A level in the UK is probably more like first-year university-level maths in Finland... But I'm sure there are plenty of academics out there who would beg to differ.

And as has been repeated a gazillion times... school is for educating entire population.
And do you think school sports have failed because we dont have fast runners?

[Rosamunda]

Yes I agree.
No I don't think so.

And I have never said otherwise.

[TimoR]

One of the hidden jewels is The English School.
School is from age five (two years before primary school) until end of high school making it longest duration English schooling in Finland, I believe.
Despite of the easy mistake coming from its name it is not English school but bilingual school, so half of studies are studied in Finnish and half are in English.
Many teachers are native English speakers so you don't need to worry about them learning bad accept; it won't be any issue there.

One reason why it is not so popular is that it is private school and thus it costs about 700€/year.

About high school I don't know yet, but I expect it is in English only and costs about the same or a bit more.

[Pursuivant]

Foreigners shudder at a "private school" costing 700 a year

You had very little "bad accept" when it was run by the nuns

[Upphew]

PISA tests 15 year-olds. Not high-school students. And it's not a competition. But this is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... l_Olympiad

(and there are no Finns in there).

Yes there are: http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx

[Rosamunda]

Wow!
Correct me if I'm wrong... But the numbers seem to suggest that Finland has never been as poor at maths as it is now. The decline is impressive to say the least.
Or did I miss something?

[Upphew]

Wow!
Correct me if I'm wrong... But the numbers seem to suggest that Finland has never been as poor at maths as it is now. The decline is impressive to say the least.
Or did I miss something?

You are comparing few (of the best I suppose) examples and deduce from that the situation in whole country. Fail from deduction, even though you got the result right.
Term used in headlines is crumbling: http://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/a1363660574167

[Rosamunda]

Well, a trend is usually a good macro indicator of the general situation and that data you linked to goes back decades... It would certainly suggest that Finland is not currently producing world-class math students in big numbers. Nothing to brag about anyway.

But, I'm not drawing any conclusions from the numbers... I'll leave that to the media and the Board of Education. My own opinions are based more on my experience and observations as someone who teaches business/finance related subjects.

[onkko]

Wow!
Correct me if I'm wrong... But the numbers seem to suggest that Finland has never been as poor at maths as it is now. The decline is impressive to say the least.
Or did I miss something?

You miss statistics. 5m cant produce same "top on field" as 500m.
Finland was 70th in 2014 while its 116th in population, well done.

[Rosamunda]

Yes, there does seem to be a vague correlation between population size and current rankings (Chine, USA, India, Russia all fare better than Finland) but that still doesn't explain the trend. Why has Finland gone from ranking 30-40th in the 1990s to ranking 60-70th this decade? I don't think that can be explained by population numbers. Other European countries such as Italy, Spain and Germany have maintained their rankings since the 1980s and a few (eg the Netherlands) have improved. Slovakia (similar population to Finland) has consistently ranked around 35th.

But it might be interesting to map Pisa scores against the Olympiad scores to see if there is an inverse correlation between the two! That would be interesting (but unlikely given the scores of Korea in both).

[Upphew]

Yes, there does seem to be a vague correlation between population size and current rankings (Chine, USA, India, Russia all fare better than Finland) but that still doesn't explain the trend. Why has Finland gone from ranking 30-40th in the 1990s to ranking 60-70th this decade? I don't think that can be explained by population numbers. Other European countries such as Italy, Spain and Germany have maintained their rankings since the 1980s and a few (eg the Netherlands) have improved. Slovakia (similar population to Finland) has consistently ranked around 35th.

Math skills are getting worse and worse here. Universities have problem getting enough students with good enough skills in maths.

I have a hunch that China, USA, India and Russia fast track the top students.

[onkko]

Yes, there does seem to be a vague correlation between population size and current rankings (Chine, USA, India, Russia all fare better than Finland) but that still doesn't explain the trend. Why has Finland gone from ranking 30-40th in the 1990s to ranking 60-70th this decade? I don't think that can be explained by population numbers. Other European countries such as Italy, Spain and Germany have maintained their rankings since the 1980s and a few (eg the Netherlands) have improved. Slovakia (similar population to Finland) has consistently ranked around 35th.

But it might be interesting to map Pisa scores against the Olympiad scores to see if there is an inverse correlation between the two! That would be interesting (but unlikely given the scores of Korea in both).

Immigration?

[Pursuivant]

They started to cut the hours in maths education all through the 90's. It starts showing up now.

Also, already in the 70's maths started being "dumbed down". In the olden days you had to do "logical maths" that fair does, trained you how to give back change in a shop, count how much material you need to to things, even taught you to calculate expenses, profit margins and such. You had people comprehending stuff instead of doing some squiggles you had no clue as to why you would need them, the theory makes no sense unless you have a practical solution. Most kids in my school were in serious trouble with the verbal tasks... I can make logic/flowcharts out of those, but only as my dad tutored me with "old fashioned" books.

[Rosamunda]

"Short" maths in lukio is ridiculously easy and of little practical use." Long" maths is very challenging and even the kids who are brave enough to try for long maths give up after the end of the first term, which is a real shame. I don't know how many students complete long maths at matriculation level, but my guess is the proportion is quite low and concerns mostly those who aim to become engineers in Otaniemi or doctors. It's about time they reviewed the curricula. I would like to see an "Intermediate" mathematics course which prepares kids for business-related courses in UAS/University... not rocket science.

As for onkko´s rather predictable "immigration"... There may be some truth that immigration has an impact on results. For several years now students from immigrant families have out-performed white British children in the UK in many subjects including mathematics, as per this government paper (2011). https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... -RR079.pdf

Chinese and Indian pupils have the highest odds of entry and achievement for
maths and science A levels, followed by Pakistani, Black African and Bangladeshi
pupils, with Black Caribbean pupils having the lowest odds for these outcomes.
• For A level entry effects, all minority groups apart from Black Caribbean have
stronger odds of taking A level maths and sciences than White British pupils,
except in the case of physics, where only Chinese pupils are clearly ahead of the
majority.

[Upphew]

"Short" maths in lukio is ridiculously easy and of little practical use." Long" maths is very challenging and even the kids who are brave enough to try for long maths give up after the end of the first term, which is a real shame. I don't know how many students complete long maths at matriculation level, but my guess is the proportion is quite low and concerns mostly those who aim to become engineers in Otaniemi or doctors.

Agreed that long one is challenging. But shouldn't it be? A real quick googling with a bit more gin than I would like to with mathematical questions says a bit less than half of girls do long maths. In 2009. Usually it is the boys that prefer maths in lukio.