The early years are a critical period in children’s lives and yet more children are attending early year’s settings rather than developing in a home environment; this could have serious repercussions for the future generation of adults. Penn (2008, 155) repeats a quote from previous studies that one dollar in early childhood brings a return of seven dollars when children grow up. If this is the case it is important that we provide the best systems. This early institutionalisation could be potentially damaging to child development and therefore future success. However some European countries appear to have addressed this with some success. This research considers some of the possible reasons why Finnish children have been out performing English children in the OECD PISA 2006 and considers in particular the Early Years in Finland. An article by Dan Murphy in the Teacher (March 2008) raised my interest in this area as this article inferred that Finland has a more successful education system than Britain and that all the teachers in Finland have a Masters degree. The information for this article in the Teacher came from the results of OECD PISA 2006 and Education at a glance 2007. The children in Finland do not start school until they are seven, they master several languages, Finnish, English or Swedish and a high proportion of them 70% http://www.eurydice 23.7.08 (page 143) stay on for higher education or training, clearly demonstrating continued willing engagement in education. In contrast to this we have just (2008) raised the compulsory school leaving age and we pressurise children into being able to read by the time they are seven. In Finland the teachers aim to give the children “pre-skills” as opposed to teaching them, this engages the children, without pressurising them. I believe this to be an exciting and developing area of education particularly as our UK children are not considered to be global enough in their outlook (Education Guardian 18.11.2008). A paper such as this will potentially impact upon practice, policy and theory as it questions our current practices and demonstrates alternatives.

Kyro M. (2004) of the Finnish National Board of Education claims that there are “two research strategies used in the field of education in recent years ………on the one hand there are national evaluation studies…….. on the other hand there are individual or extensive networked projects that examine education policy….from several different perspectives.” This research is a comparative study and links in with the “International evaluations first and foremost the PISA,” which “places Finland in relation to other countries,” Kyro (2004). My visit to Finland provided an opportunity to be an observer and to undertake semi structured interviews from this comparisons and conclusions were drawn. A log was kept of the visit and this is also referred to in the results. The responses from the semi structured interviews are compared with responses from other settings for greater clarity. This is a small scale study with contextualised data.

The observations of the Finnish early years indicate a greater emphasis on developing the independence of the child and nurturing their interest supported by a greater experience of the outside play area. The semi structured interviews support this but they also indicate a move towards a system more comparable with the United Kingdom. A system where there is more emphasis on record keeping and session planning. The findings are currently being analysed and early indications are that the results reflect some of the standards of practice we should be aiming for, such as ‘the child at the centre’ or ‘hearing the voice of the child’ and clearly indicates a need for a greater focus on the development of the whole child as opposed to achieving differentiated targets based on a generic curriculum of one size fits all.