On November 8, 2017 at 6 pm, every school in Finland is holding a parent-teacher meeting where parents receive information on the school world and get the opportunity to ask questions and have a voice in how things are done.
Since parents have an important role in the transformation of the school, the world’s largest parent-teacher meeting will cover the challenges the changing schools are facing and present various inspiring operating models.
This meeting is a part of the HundrED project, which aims to discover educational innovations from around the world and share them with others. It’s part of the celebration of Finland’s 100th birthday, which actually takes place on December 6, 2017.
“To celebrate Finland’s 100 years of independence, we came up with the idea of involving Finland in a project that is extensive and useful on an international scale, and focuses on the future of education,” says Saku Tuominen, the project’s producer.
The nonprofit HundrED project is based on cooperation between a range of partner organisations on three sub-projects, each of which aims to find 100 innovations. The world’s largest parent-teacher meeting is part of the 100 Finland project, which details 100 projects or experiments from Finland in order to share them. A select twenty-five of them are being trialed in schools across the country. The second project, 100 Global, seeks innovations from around the world, and the third project consists of interviews with 100 experts in different fields of education from various continents.
“We wanted to find people who are passionate about the direction in which schools are heading,” Tuominen says. “An enormous number of top experts are participating. The interviews will be shared with the world on video and in written format.”
By Hannele Tavi, ThisisFINLAND Magazine 2017