More than half of municipalities are renewing comprehensive school curricula

Schedule of new curriculum varies between municipalities

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A fundamental reform of the comprehensive school curriculum calls for a total renewal of textbooks by the year 2006. The schedule for the implementation of the reforms, however, varies considerably from one municipality to the next.
      Already this autumn, more than half of the municipalities and about 60 percent of the pupils will go on with their comprehensive school education according to the revised curriculum, even at the higher levels. The City of Helsinki will follow in 2005, while some municipalities have postponed the changeover until 2006.
      For the first and second grades, the curriculum reform has already been implemented in the entire country.
     
The rather long changeover period will oblige the textbook publishers to keep both old and new stock available for several years.
      More than a third of the municipalities have decided to switch to the new curriculum at a stroke, simultaneously at all levels, despite the fact that the publishers only have new textbooks available for grades three, five, and seven.
      About 15 percent of the municipalities will instead be switching to the new curriculum at levels three, five, and seven only, while ten percent have postponed the changeover to the last possible date, in the autumn of 2006.
     
Anneli Kangasvieri, the head of the Unit of Education and Culture from the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, does not criticise the lengthy transition period.
      "Not everything tried and tested should be changed overnight. On the other hand, some municipalities are more susceptible to change than others", Kangasvieri says.
      Kangasvieri also offers the reminder that a textbook alone should not exercise control over academically-educated teachers who are skilled in their profession.
      According to Jukka Vahtola, Department Manager of Education and Humanities at the Otava Publishing Company, a textbook is an integral part of the reform, the preparation of which the representatives of publishers have actively participated in.
      "With the old textbooks, the more precise and demanding objectives of the new curriculum cannot be achieved", says Vahtola.
      Textbooks for sciences and history have undergone most changes, and a new subject, health education, is being introduced.
      An extra hour has been added to the curriculum of mathematics. To accommodate this, pages have been added to the mathematics textbooks to "deepen" the information on each subject, such as multiplication.
     
Vahtola considers nothing less than a historical change the fact that physics and chemistry will be introduced already on the fifth grade from now on, as supposed to the seventh.
      "The emphasis in the textbooks is on everyday experiences and applications. The word 'physics' only appears on the cover of the book. Primarily the book talks about water, air, space, and energy."
      The publishers also expect the revision of the curriculum to turn plummeting textbook sales into an upswing. Last year municipalities spent EUR 45 million to buy 4.4 million textbooks for pupils.
      In the peak year of 1980, 9.2 million new schoolbooks were purchased.
      The purchasing of books represents a 1.5 percent slice of the comprehensive education total budget of EUR 3 billion.


Links:
  Otava Publishing Company

Helsingin Sanomat