Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

Hyvää huomenta!

That’s good morning in Finnish. 

Just to be clear, I don’t know Finnish (though I’d love to learn), but I was inspired to google this because I want to talk about the growing influence of ‘Nordic’ education in Indian schools. 

A few weeks ago, my Google feed on Indian education started showing one article rather consistently—an Al Jazeera piece on how “Finland’s globally acclaimed school system” is now influencing a number of private Indian schools.

This one article was only the tip of the Nordic iceberg. 

A slightly targeted search revealed a cluster of pieces, all written in the last three weeks. All of them talking up the benefits of  “practical” knowledge over rote learning.

This PR campaign, which seems better coordinated than most, is also timely. School education in India is going through its greatest upheaval, with the shocks of the pandemic now becoming apparent in dipping learning levels. Schools need an edge to attract students. The Finland model also makes all the right noises vis-a-vis the National Education Policy (NEP), which is pushing school education to be more conceptual and less exam oriented. 

Labels have always been important in the Indian educational context. 

Private. English-medium. Montessori. IB. 

Now, Nordic-inspired can join that list of ‘signals’ that rich Indian parents can look out for. For Finnish education companies, private Indian schools could be a potential gold mine. In fact, the Finnish government has set up a whole outpost here in India called the Finland Education Hub, a conduit for Finnish education companies to find Indian school partners.

Finland seems to have found the perfect fit for its soft diplomacy with education. But, the type of schools these models are being rolled out in—elite Indian schools—are quite the opposite of the Finnish model’s core mission of equity. 

The Disneyland of education

Finland’s top rank in the 2001 PISA is now the stuff of lore. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial survey of 15-year-old students around the world that assesses the extent of their knowledge and skills. 

Not only did it force the world to take notice of this small nation of about five million people, it also turned Finland into a sort of educational Disneyland. Governments from across the world sent emissaries to find out what Finand got right, and bring back dismembered pieces of policy and pedagogy to apply to a (usually) completely different local context.

Some of the most common ideas exported across the globe include the abolition of homework, assessments, and even subjects.