Written for Virtual Finland by Juha OjanenPress Officer, Ministry of Education

The main aim of the Finnish education system is to ensure that the entire population has access to education and training. The principle of lifelong learning, the idea that people are always capable of learning new things at all stages of life, is an important principle for all education provision, from basic schooling to adult education. In 1998, public spending on education accounted for 6.2 per cent of GDP in Finland (against an OECD average of 5.3 per cent). Finnish people have a high standard of education. Young people, in particular, have been rated very highly in international comparisons. The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which evaluates the educational achievement of children of school age in the OECD countries, placed Finland among the top countries in 2001.

As an EU Member State, Finland has gone out of its way to defend the rights of small countries. Finland has tried to fit in both at the core of the Union and on the fringes of it, and the Finns have at times been enthusiastic about integration and at times cautious about it. Finland has been a Member of the European Union for just over a decade now, a period of economic success.