Rethinking the Role of Parents in Finnish Education
The Nordic Summer University (NSU) organised one of its Winter Symposia in Helsinki 20-22 March 2024. I had the opportunity to present a guided discussion. In this blogpost you can read the presentation I gave before the discussion.
Abstract
I attempt to ignite a discussion, shedding light on the challenges faced by parents, particularly mothers, with foreign/migrant backgrounds in Finland. As an activist migrant mother, I focus on the transformative potential of increased parent involvement addressing not only issues of segregation, but contributing to a systemic change.
I present an analysis of the existing parent involvement model, highlighting that the low interest of parents and the individualist approach in Finnish society is rooted in privilege. Drawing comparisons between the Finnish and Spanish models, we can see how the Finnish model can learn from others outside the Nordics, such as the Spanish one which conceives families as a fundamental pillar in the educational community.
I stress that allowing parental involvement requires the support and commitment of principals and teachers, as well as a change at a cultural level. Through this guided discussion, I invite academics in the Nordics to be interested in the role of parents when analysing challenges that prevail in educational structures.
Hello everyone! My name is Silvia Padrón Revilla. I am a migrant mother and I had assumed that when my child started going to daycare and school, I would automatically gain access to a community of parents. Instead I felt isolated and frustrated, and I began to wonder if I was doing something wrong. However, most parents I met, even those who spoke fluent Finnish, seemed to struggle and that’s how I became an activist in parent involvement.
I advocate for more parental involvement in Finnish Education. My observations come from a personal analysis, not from research. Nevertheless, I have a decade of experience working as a humanitarian worker and another decade working as the CEO of medical clinics. I have been an activist for over 4 years and nowadays I am a vice member of the board of Vanhempainliitto (the Finnish Parent Association Union) and a board member of Helvary (the Helsinki Parents Association). My journey and the feedback I hear everytime I talk about parent involvement, give me the confidence to assert that my assumptions follow a right track.
Parent involvement in Finland is weak and decreasing in general.
This has to do with a cultural perception and a model in which parents are outsiders of the educational community, and parent associations are perceived as mere fundraisers.
The logic works as follows: Education in Finland is the best in the world so parents can go to work and trust the school. It is meant to be the beauty of a system with egalitarian values in which everyone has access to quality education and parents can trust the system.
But, research has shown that the egalitarian values of the system are a myth, and my experience has shown me that the system is based on privilege.
In this context, I understand privilege as the unearned access or advantages granted to specific groups of parents belonging to some social groups of Finnish society. So parental involvement exists, but in an individualistic form that is not accessible to many families.
We perceive an apparent lack of parental involvement, but this is false: parents do interact with the education system, but it is an individualistic interaction.
I will present four ways how parental involvement happens in an interaction of the family exclusively with their own child.
First, If we consider essential aspects such as homework and, more importantly, reading skills, an area in which Finnish students have recently seen declining performance, the need for parental involvement becomes evident. This is an involvement the parents have with their own child.
Second, a concerning trend in the Helsinki area: school shopping. This phenomenon involves parents choosing schools rather than enrolling their children in the closest one to their neighbourhood. There are different ways of doing this, including registering children at a relative's address or moving to a particular area of the city to access certain schools. What I’ve noticed is that when children have problems in the school or the school has a bad reputation, parents rather than changing the school, change school. Again here, the parental involvement revolves around your child, hardly interacting with the school.
Third, we find reinforced programs and elite language schools, among others. These programs focus on particular skills such as music or languages and the entrance is competitive. These programs require children to attend hobbies (music classes for example) or other preparations to pass the access exams even if the programs are free. Parents have to be very much involved in their children's education. They don’t just trust the system, they navigate the system together with their children. So, yet again the involvement is at the individual level.
The fourth and last aspect I wanted to describe is the way the more social parental involvement is articulated.
On one hand, parent associations are perceived as fundraisers, not as the voice of parents. Belonging to the parent association is seen as a hobby that some parents have and not as a space of real interaction where parents can influence the school.
On the other hand, the other typical group interaction in the school environment would be with the teacher and the class. Something really sad about the Finnish education system is that parents are perceived as a burden by teachers. This does not necessarily apply to individual parents concerned about issues of their own children. The rejection applies to addressing the parents as a group (for example parents of a class). The relationship between teacher and the parents always revolves around your child, never around dynamics in a class or wider aspects of the school.
As I said before, it is an individualistic model because we see the parental involvement remains mainly inside the family. Involvement consists in interacting and supporting your own child. Parental involvement is never intended to create or reinforce community, for example parent meetings don’t play a role in helping families to interact with each other.
I suggest that this model of parental involvement, despite being limited and weak, works more or less OK for Finnish families. Here I refer to the narrow understanding of Finnishness, so families that: speak Finnish at home, families that don’t have a migrant background, families that are white and families that don’t belong to minorities such as the Roma, Somali or Sami. At the end, it is a system in which children of families who can exercise fully this individualistic parental involvement can thrive.
But some parents can’t exercise this kind of parental involvement. From my personal experience, I can say that, for example, when you are not fluent in Finnish, there is one barrier after another in every single step of parental involvement.
This model, rooted in privilege, harms particularly vulnerable families because they don’t have access to it, but also because these groups need more from parental involvement. Parents that don’t feel welcome in school associations or parent meetings with the class, can't find community in school and the school community is very valuable when you don’t have good networks, when you need more friends for you or your children, and when you need help to navigate the system.
The parental involvement model in Finland is not great and, with this landscape, one could have a pessimistic view on parent involvement and its potential. When we are immersed in a system we might think that everywhere is the same, but we can take a look at the Spanish system:
Community and network: The communities around schools in Spain are very strong and very often you will be asked, as an adult, in which school you studied. This gives information about the values of your family and your social circles. Parents know that children start to build their future adult network in school and take this into account when choosing schools.
Integration for the whole family, not only the children: In Spain, families know each other and supervise their children's friendships. Not all families will be at the same level of integration in school, but for some families the school community can be stronger than the extended family.
The sense of belonging and sense of identity is important for all, but it can be especially crucial for children with migrant backgrounds. The bonding of the class as a group is strengthened if the children see each other outside the school and if they know their classmates' families. In Spain the class is seen as a social group and the issues of the class are discussed in parent meetings with the teachers. In this sense, parents are seen as allies that influence each other and cooperate with the teacher. This can be for carpooling to go to school or to pass books among students of different years or to discuss the behaviour of children in class. It’s funny that the lack of certain services or resources can force cooperation among parents. People don’t expect school to be completely free and, therefore, rely on each other. Parents don’t trust school blindly. Here in Finland it’s almost an insult to question the teacher or the Education system, it’s the Nation pride.
One last observation about the Spanish model is that parents associations and the school board tackle serious matters concerning the school and they have a real influence. So the power balance between parents, teachers and management is more balanced.
Ideally proper research should be done to compare the two models as what I have presented is based on my observations. But, what I take from my personal experience is that, when I look at my childhood, the school community was the most important network for my parents (more than family or work). When I look at my adult life, my school and high school friendships are still the base of my social life in Spain. And when I see my life as a migrant, the moment my child started school in a bilingüal Finnish/Spanish program my social life took a turn and I found community and a sense of belonging like I never did before in ten years living in Finland.
I propose that increased parent involvement has transformative potential. I suggest that families participating more in school will solve issues of segregation and contribute to solving other systemic problems of the Finnish education landscape such as bullying.
The easy part of this proposition is that no one opposes it in theory, but the hard part is that it requires a cultural change.
To conclude I want to call for a reconceptualisation of parent involvement in Finland—one that sees parent involvement as a solution to mitigating segregation and goes beyond. Parent participation can help address the broader crisis in the educational system. The rebranding of parent associations and the integration of parents into the education system stand as catalysts for transformative change. It would enrich the educational experience for all children and their families, creating a more equitable and inclusive educational landscape.
I invite academics to collaborate in exploring innovative solutions that promote inclusivity and dismantle systemic barriers.
Illustration by Anna Doppler-Kunčić 2024. Drawing made during the symposium of one of the presenters.
