Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 2:02 pm on 14 June 2017.
What needs to be absolutely clear—and I took the opportunity to visit Finland in January, myself, to look at education policy and practice in their schools—is that the Finnish Government are very concerned about Finland. Relative to them—it would be great if we had performance that way—but relative to them, the Finnish system is dropping down the PISA league table. It is not improving. It is not holding its own. Their performance is diminishing. Compared to ours, we would want to have those scores, but that is the reality of the Finnish system. We are looking to learn from international examples, whether that be Finland—. Officials were last week in Ontario in Canada, looking at their very successful model, and we will continue to look at best practice internationally to inform our education reforms. But let me be absolutely clear: removing all forms of accountability has landed us in the position of where we find ourselves in, and nobody—nobody—thinks that what we’re doing at the moment is good enough. We are committed to a national reform mission that is based on raising standards and raising attainment level, and we will learn from the best, wherever that may be.