The National Board of Education has confirmed a new framework curriculum for comprehensive education. The national framework curriculum forms the basis for drawing up local curricula, which is usually done by municipalities. The new curriculum must be in use in comprehensive schools by 1 August 2006. The new upper secondary school framework curriculum will be adopted simultaneously in all Finnish upper secondary schools on 1 August 2005.

The National Board of Education has confirmed a new framework curriculum for comprehensive education. The national framework curriculum forms the basis for drawing up local curricula, which is usually done by municipalities. The new curriculum must be in use in comprehensive schools by 1 August 2006. The new upper secondary school framework curriculum will be adopted simultaneously in all Finnish upper secondary schools on 1 August 2005.

Basic education

• promotes a sense of community, responsibility and respect for the rights and freedoms of the individual
• helps to support the pupils’ part in the Finnish society and the globalising world
• helps to promote tolerance and equality by giving girls and boys the ability to act on the basis of equal rights and responsibilities in society, working life, and family life

Teaching of the subjects is politically neutral and non-denominational.

The values that underlie education are to be specified in the local basic education curriculum, They are to be incorporated into the objectives and contents of basic education, and into everyday activity.

The task of basic education

The task of basic education is to e.g.

• enhance a sense of community and equality
• develop skills for critical assessment and renewing one’s outlook as well as modes of action

Basic education must provide an opportunity for diversified growth, learning, and the development of a healthy sense of self-esteem, so that the pupils can obtain the knowledge and skills they need in life, become capable of further study, and, as involved citizens, develop a democratic society.

Also, basic education aims at increasing an awareness of the values and ways of acting that form the foundation of society and awaken desire for lifelong learning.

Conception of learning

The national core curriculum has been formulated on the basis of a conception of learning as an individual and community process of building knowledge and skills. Through this process, cultural involvement is created.

In addition to new knowledge and skills, both learning and work habits are to be learned that will serve as tools of lifelong learning.

In all its forms, learning is an active and goal-oriented process that includes independent or collective problem-solving.

In learning, new possibilities open up for understanding culture and the meanings that culture contains, and for participating in social activity.

The learning environment

Learning environment in basic education must support pupils’ growth and learning. The objective is to increase pupils' curiosity and motivation to learn, and to promote their activeness, self-direction, and creativity by offering interesting challenges and problems.

The learning environment must guide pupils in setting their own objectives and evaluating their own actions.

The pupils may be given the chance to participate in the creation and development of their own learning environment.

The learning environment must support interaction and guide the pupils in working as members of a group.

The objective is an open, encouraging, unhurried, positive atmosphere, for whose maintenance the teacher and the pupils share responsibility.

The operational culture

The objective is an open, interactive operational culture that supports cooperation both within the school and with the home and the rest of the society.

The operational culture embraces all the school's official and unofficial rules and operational and behavioural models, as well as the values, principles, and criteria on which the quality of the schoolwork is founded.

It also encompasses extracurricular school activities such as celebrations, theme days, and various events.

The school's values, educational objectives, and cross-curricular themes must assume concrete form in the operational culture.

Working approaches

The function of the working approaches is

• to develop social, learning, thinking, working, and problem-solving skills, and to foster active participation.
• They must also provide opportunities for the creative activity, experiences, and play characteristic of the age group in question.

Working approaches are chosen because they

• excite a desire to learn
• motivate the pupils to work purposefully
• support learning that occurs through interaction among the pupils
• promote social flexibility, an ability to function in constructive cooperation, and the assumption of responsibility for others.

Cross-curricular themes in the national core curriculum

Cross-curricular themes represent central emphases of the educational and teaching work

• Manifest basic values and supplement underlying basic values in teaching
• Implemented in core and optional subjects, from the perspectives characteristic of those subjects, and in a manner required by the pupil's developmental phase
  • In school’s joint events
  • In school’s operating and learning culture
• Support integration of teaching
• Participatory citizenship and entrepreneurship (cross-curricular themes) can be taken as an optional subject

Cross-curricular themes in Basic Education

• Growth as a person
• Cultural identity and internationalism
• Media skills and communication
• Participatory citizenship and entrepreneurship
• Responsibility for the environment, well-being and a sustainable future
• Safety and traffic
• Technology and the individual

Hannele Louekoski