The international surveys report that Finland is one of the world’s most competitive countries and that it has the world’s best education system. As we know these two – competitiveness and education - are linked together. In Finland we believe that we have to invest in education, in research and in higher education. Education is a factor for competitiveness.
This policy has received an acknowledgement from the World Economic Forum, which identified Finland as the world’s most competitive economy, citing its ‘culture of innovation’.
The key words in Finnish education policy are quality, efficiency, equality and internalisation. Sustainable economic development will continue to be the best way to ensure the nation’s cultural, social and economic welfare.
The EU 2006 Regular report states that Turkey has made a good progress in the area of education and training. Turkey has been participating successfully in three Community programmes – Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci and Youth that were launched in May 2004. Several Turkey’s institutions take part very successfully in these programmes today. A well publicised girls’ education campaign has had a great success and progress has been made in increasing enrolment ratios at all educational levels.
Today we have here two specialists on the field of education to talk about these topics. Dr. Pasi Sahlberg from the World Bank, Washington and Mr. Andreas Lönnqvist from the EU support to Basic Education programme project at Education Ministry of Turkey.
Updated 12/15/2006
