Should ‘failing’ students repeat a grade? Retrospective response from Finland

Abstract

Educational excellence in a school or a nation is not only about statistical averages of student achievement. It also entails the idea that all or most of the students regardless of their abilities, family backgrounds, mother tongue or other characteristics, should enjoy learning and succeed in school. But since we are all different, school systems find meeting this ideal difficult. Students who need more time to learn or have special needs related to learning are often moved to special class or asked to repeat a grade instead of being helped to progress with their peers. We answer the question in the title of this essay by using Finland as an example of an education system that has moved from remedying learning problems, i.e., using grade retention as a cure, to preventing learning difficulties, and relying on early intervention and individualized support to all students. This essay provides therefore historical perspective to the evolution of policies regarding educational failure in general and grade repetition in particular. Education policies since the 1970s in Finland—a nation often regarded as an international model due to its equitable and system-wide high academic performances—have been particularly crafted to reduce educational failure of students and promote success of all schools (Sahlberg 2007). This has led to high completion and low grade repetition rates that characterize the Finnish education system today. Indeed, fewer than 2% of students who leave the compulsory nine-grade comprehensive school today at the age of 16 have repeated a grade at some point of schooling. Grade repetition is at similar level in other Nordic countries but much higher elsewhere in Europe; in France 40%, Belgium, in the Netherlands and Spain one third and in Germany and Switzerland one quarter of students are grade repeaters.