Finland's largest education export consortium FinnWayLearning aims to conquer the world market
The City of Turku, University of Turku, Turku University of Applied Sciences and Turku Adult Education Centre have jointly set up an education export consortium, FinnWayLearning. The driving force behind them is the Education Division of the City of Turku.
Encompassing the entire arc of the Finnish education – from primary to adult education and advanced research at universities – the FinnWayLearning consortium is internationally unique.
– Our common goal is to offer the full palette of Finnish education and training expertise to the international market. Through cooperation we can achieve economies of scale to sell education and training products, while new forms of cooperation will create the conditions for the innovation and the selling of education services that will generate profit, stresses Aleksi Randell, the Mayor of Turku, who is supported by Kalervo Väänänen, Rector of the University Turku; Juha Kettunen, Rector of Turku University of Applied Sciences; Tommi Forss, Rector of Turku Adult Education Centre.
The specific areas of FinnWayLearning’s export of education are learning and pedagogy, new methodology and content for education institutions and teachers, cooperation between education and working life, learning according to the demands of working life, promoting business innovation in higher education, services for chains of education and technical visits to education institutions.
FinnWayLearning education export products include, amongst other things, Innovation Pedagogy, the Training Guarantee Model, ICT as a Language Learning Tool, KiVa School Antibullying Program, Project Aces and Workplace Instructor Training. The target areas are the EU as well as the Middle East, China, the rest of Asia and Russia. The education products will be launched at an export event organised in Tianjin, China at beginning of May.
Finnish education expertise is in demand
Education export belongs within the service industries, which are estimated to account for 60 percent of global employment and 20 percent of world trade. Education exports are estimated to account for 3 to 4 percent of the global market for services.
– Interest in Finnish education expertise has grown thanks to the results published by PISA, thus education exports currently present a huge area of growth potential for Finland. However, so far, Finland has not taken enough advantage of this potential for growth, says Matti Mäkelä, Project Manager of the City of Turku’s Education Division.
The Finnish education system's strengths include: teacher expertise, long-term development work, special needs education, excellent learning outcomes in basic education and, in particular, vocational training contacts for working life. In addition, the foundations of education in Finland are teacher training, an open and transparent administrative culture and regional equality.
– FinnWayLearning has turned these strengths into commercial products and makes use of them in concrete ways in the export of education. Finland and Turku contain internationally unique expertise, which we aim to export to the world, states Matti Mäkelä.
The joint annual turnover of the operators involved in FinnWayLearning is approximately 625 million euros and Turku’s educational institutions have more than 60,000 students and 8,000 staff.
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