The school of the future will shake up teaching, teaching technology, teaching methods and learning environments. Now is the time to bring the digital era, social media and various networks into schools. In Finland the first school of the future will be ready in 2010.

The school of the future is a development project of the City of Oulu aiming at skills for pupils and schools in the third millennium. The project is based on the need for change: the basic core of the Finnish school institution has remained unchanged for a long time.

“Today’s children of the digital era move easily in the social media, look for information and network, and are changing the status of the school institution and teachers as owners of information,” say project manager Pasi Mattila and designer Jukka Miettunen.

“Breaking the classroom boundaries in different learning environments and using technology and new pedagogical ideas will improve learning results and increase motivation and enjoyment. The sense of being a community and well-being are also important matters.”

Many variables

The aim of the project is to change the operating culture at Finnish schools by developing teachership, leadership, the support services of teaching, teaching technology and its use and learning environments, and the physical construction of schools.

“The change in the direction of the operating culture will need to be supported by coaching in change, a new attitude and operating methods and leading at the community level,” Miettunen says.

“We want to challenge the various players in the corporate and research sectors to join in developing the school of the future together. The cooperation will need furniture manufacturers, publishers, developers of applications, equipment producers, operators and architects and designers.”

Tomorrow’s skills today

The multi-purpose building that will be completed in 2010 in the Ritaharju district of Oulu is one of twelve Finnish schools of the future. The school was selected out of 200 applicants to be part of Microsoft’s worldwide Innovative School programme.

“Strategic partnership with companies is still a relatively new and strange idea for the teaching world and it requires instruction. The network and model created by Microsoft are ideal for bridging the gap between the school world and corporate world,” Mattila maintains.

The Ritaharju school will develop into ‘the school at the heart of the village’, operating not only as the local school but also as premises for an entire village community. The school, which is situated close to Oulu Technology Park and the university, will be open to research and project development leading to innovations in the teaching sector as a kind of livinglab environment.

With the School of the Future project and Tomorrow’s Skills Today theme, the City of Oulu has been invited to the ‘Better City, Better Life’ World Expo in Shanghai in 2010.

Finnish pupils right at the top The competence of Finnish 15-year-olds in natural sciences, mathematics and reading skills is right at the top in international terms, according to the results of the PISA 2006 survey, which was published last year. Finland’s result is much better than that of any other country that took part in the survey, and the number of points was the highest ever achieved in the survey. What stands out in the competence is the even spread. The percentage of weak pupils is small in Finland compared with other OECD countries. The differences between schools are also the smallest of all the participants. PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) examines competence at three-yearly intervals. The 2006 survey involved 155 Finnish schools and almost 5,300 pupils.

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The aim is to spread the School of the Future project not only locally and regionally, but also nationally and internationally.