| Oulu’s education is happy and successful.
Finland topped the International Student Assessment
PISA 2000 and 2003 test survey, and has received
consistent praise for effective educational
standards, despite short days, 10-week summer
holidays, and not-more-than-average public spending.
Most teachers have master’s degrees in their
subjects, and teachers need a master’s in education.
Literacy levels are extremely high, very few fall
through the net, and there is very little streaming.
The city has approximately 14,500 school pupils,
8,000 in technical colleges, 20,000 adult students,
and a university student population of 17,000.
Typical Oulu classrooms contain the latest
technology, data projectors, internet and video
conferencing. Many schools are part of EU projects –
and through the local university, the latest
pedagogical approaches. They’re also strikingly
clean and quiet. You can live opposite a high school
and get more noise pollution from a passing Volvo.
Many expatriates choose to send their children to
the Oulu International School, a primary and middle
year candidate for the International Baccalaureate (IBO)
that educates children of 7 to 16 of any nationality
in English. It has close relations with the Oulu
lyseo, the first Finnish-speaking pre-university
school in Northern Finland. Nobel nominee and ex
Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari is an ex-pupil
and the lyseo offers the pre-university
Baccalaureate diploma.
Oulu University of Applied Sciences, founded in 1991, offers 29 B.Sc
graduate programmes in everything from Orthopaedic
and Prosthetic Technology to dance teaching and
horticulture, and responds to the business and
employment needs of Northern Finland by arranging
and developing training at the higher vocational
level. It emphasises interaction “between the
student and his or her environment.
Oulu University, founded in 1958, occupies two
locations, the Linnamaa campus 6 km out of the city,
and the medical college closer to the centre. Of its
16,400 students, 700 are international students. One
of the Shanghai Jia Tong 400 top-ranked universities,
its main language of instruction is Finnish, but a
variety of programs and courses are offered in
English. The grading system, in comparison to
universities in other countries, is very generous –
a student can routinely retake an exam several times. |
