“This is what we do every day,” says Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School principal Kari Louhivuori, “prepare kids for life.” (Stuart Conway)

Finland has vastly improved in reading, math and science literacy over the past decade in large part because its teachers are trusted to do whatever it takes to turn young lives around. This 13-year-old, Besart Kabashi, received something akin to royal tutoring.

“I took Besart on that year as my private student,” Louhivuori told me in his office, which boasted a Beatles “Yellow Submarine” poster on the wall and an electric guitar in the closet. When Besart was not studying science, geography and math, he was parked next to Louhivuori’s desk at the front of his class of 9- and 10-year- olds, cracking open books from a tall stack, slowly reading one, then another, then devouring them by the dozens. By the end of the year, the son of Kosovo war refugees had conquered his adopted country’s vowel-rich language and arrived at the realization that he could, in fact, learn.

Years later, a 20-year-old Besart showed up at Kirkkojarvi’s Christmas party with a bottle of Cognac and a big grin. “You helped me,” he told his former teacher. Besart had opened his own car repair firm and a cleaning company. “No big fuss,” Louhivuori told me. “This is what we do every day, prepare kids for life.”

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Education system must maintain the quality of education: President

President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday stressed the establishments of norms and performance-based system for learning outcomes and emphasized on maintaining quality and standards for education in fast expanding education sector. With the growth in the education sector, we must not allow its quality to take a backseat, he said.

“We must establish norms and performance-based marks for learning process and outcome strictly and enforce them across the schools,” Mukherjee said while addressing a function on National Education Day, celebrated on the birth anniversary of India’s first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

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