The national government of Finland provides for its students on a national level. This means that the national government apportions funds to each school, and funding is distributed based on the number of students at each school. Additional funding is afforded to schools in areas of high unemployment or with a high proportion of immigrants. This helps to eliminate one of the most important factors in educational inequality: inequality of funding per student. Students in Finland do not pay tuition for any part of their schooling, as all education is funded entirely through the national government.
        Similarly, the standards for curricula are set nationally, and do not vary from place to place, although teachers do have some freedom to apply these standards in various ways. This means teachers can choose the teaching strategies they use and what materials they teach to students, but the major learning outcomes of the classes are the same across the country. This works out well for Finnish students, because teachers are able to discover how they teach best and adapt their teaching to the needs of the students.
Teachers in Finland are very well-prepared when they begin working. All schoolteachers in Finland are required to complete 5 years of university in an education programme, 15-25% of which consists of practicing teaching lessons at a model school. In addition to preparing teachers exceptionally well, Finland uses almost no standardised testing at all. This allows teachers to simply teach children subjects without spending time teaching them towards passing a standard exam.
        Schools in Finland are divided into the compulsory level, the upper-secondary level, and the post-secondary level, which consists of both universities and polytechnic schools. The compulsory part of Finnish schooling lasts for nine years, from ages 7-16. During the first six years, the children within a school are usually given the same courses, with the ability to choose some courses during the last 3 years. Students take classes in multiple languages, history, mathematics and sciences, among many other subjects. During compulsory schooling, many children will use some special education, with about 22% of students taking at least one special education course. The purpose of special education is to help students in such classes to achieve the same learning outcomes as the other students, and it is largely successful in doing so. As a result, special education is considered helpful to many students and is not likely to be stigmatised in Finland.
During their time in school, students are also given mandatory counseling services to help them decide what to do after they graduate. The choice is essentially between one of three things: general upper-secondary school, vocational upper-secondary school, or entering the workforce. It should be noted that the children are not tracked into any of these groups or told what path they should pick. Rather, all children are given the same level of education and allowed to choose how (or whether) to continue it. Students are also allowed to change their decision and switch between vocational or general upper-secondary school. In Finland, 99% of children finish their compulsory schooling, and 95% of those children go on to upper-secondary school. Afterwards, students are entitled to take the ‘matriculation exam’ and apply to either university or polytechnic school.
