Mattlidens Gymnasium

Today we had the opportunity to visit Mattliden Gymnasium, this is a general secondary school for pupils aged between sixteen and nineteen. This prepares the pupils before they go to university. It is a Swedish-Finnish (lessons are taught through Swedish)  school and is the only one of its kind in Espoo. We had the opportunity to meet with the principal who spoke to us about the education system and her school and then we had the chance to look around the school and spoke to some of the pupils, this was a great experience. I spent around twenty minutes speaking to an eighteen year old pupil called Michael, he was originally from Greece but has been living in Finland since he was seven. He explained to me the importance of education and how being independent in their learning is ingrained from a very young age. He said there are no excuses when you don’t do work/homework and you are only letting yourself down if you don’t do it.

Some of the schools in Finland are very elite and they will only take pupils with a high GPA (points system linked to teachers grades) so Finnish pupils know they must work hard to get the best education possible. When I was walking around the school there were many areas with sofas and tables where pupils would meet and socialise but would also be completing work.

Overall the  school was very different to the others we have visited so far but the attitude of the pupils and the expectations of learning are carried all the way through the education system.

Mr Allen

11 thoughts on “Mattlidens Gymnasium

    1. Kiitos Mia, I am very well thank you, I am currently replying to all the comments on the blog and will then be writing up my notes from today. Busy, busy, busy!

    1. It is Zoe. You would have liked the school that I visited today, you could choose sport as an option and there were a variety of gymnastics / dance lessons.

    1. Hello Libby, I am having a wonderful time thank you. I haven’t picked up many Finnish phrases because the majority of people here speak such good English. I have got a recording of a girl around your age counting up the 10. I will upload that as part of my blog today.

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