Education system in Finland

In these first posts I will make comments on countries that have been showing an outstanding performance on cross-country ranking in education. Let’s start with Finland, country known for the jacuzzi and with some popular F1 race pilots such as Mika Hakkinen and Kimmi Raikkonen. Sorry if i mistyped.

But the most impressive factor is related to the top position of 15-year old finnish students on the highly popular standardized test Pisa implemented by OECD.  

I tried to list a set of factors that contributes to the quality of education over there:

I) students stay in class for only part-time,  then kids have more free time to develop their creativity

II) maternity leave lasts for 1 year and paternity leave lasts for 6 months. But in some cases it is possible to extend the leave for up to 3 years.

III) high skilled teachers, and even for those teaching on elementary school need  to hold a master’s degree. And there is strong competition among them to get a job, once the salary is quite attractive. Teachers take some regular training on teaching skills, which is an important aspect considering that they have big autonomy on how to teach in class.

IV) students are not submitted to a large set of what they name as standardized tests. Finnish people think that these tests only reinforce the objective to perform good on the tests rather than a genuine interest on learning.

V) “No child left behind policy” which is a big effort by finnish government to ensure that finnish kids (even kids of immigrant families) have access to the same high quality of education. By the way, there are many public nursery schools.

VI) Besides the traditional school path (elementary, secondary and university), finnish can also opt for a so-called vocational career, which is a good choice for those who pursue a technical career. In this case, after the secondary level, students who had some internship experience, might apply for an applied sciences university. Having graduated, and with 3 years of professional experience, they can apply for a master in applied sciences. 

These issues are just some out. of many interesting features for us to be inspired and perhaps follow for a better future of Brazilian economy. Of course, Finland is a developed economy with a high income per capita and low income inequality. But the idea of this blog is to take some good examples (sort of role models) worldwide and see some possible paths to be followed. 

New Blog

My name is Mauricio and i’m one out of millions of Brazilians who will vote on Brazilian general elections on this Sunday (October 07th). I am politically upset mainly because of the likely outcome of presidential election in the wake of a high intolerance with opposite views, the speech of anger from several segments of society and mainly the lack of a debate about relevant topics that effectively matters to change the growth/development path of Brazilian economy. I am disappointed by the lack of serenity to discuss those topics. There is a bunch of analysis regarding what has been done by previous governments, or even on what might be done ahead, but i don’t see a focus on the step-by-step to adopt measures that change the country at a solid pace.

Taking all these issues into account, I decided to change the objective of this blog that was set aside and focused in several topics more related to the macroeconomic situation.

So the new objective is to write about successful  experiences worldwide and also in Brazil regarding relevant topics that effectively might change the level of our socioeconomic development. I will start covering education, which is a key topic that might be improved aiming at a significant development of our country. 

My challenge is to write at an easy to understand style, under the perspective of an economist considering my academic and professional background. 

Brazilian economic situation: can you see where is the light at the end of the tunnel? ;)

I´ve just read the macroeconomic policies proposals of Mr. Marina Silva presidential candidacy, and I´ve got positively impressed by the objective to create a Fiscal Council. Actually, this is a measure adopted by some countries around the world, with various designs. By clearly setting its objectives and ensuring its Independence, it would be a great achievement for higher Fiscal Transparency and likely improvement of Fiscal Accounts on a sustainable basis. I will comment more on this in future posts.

View for 2015

I´m quite pessimistic about Brazilian economy on next year. The high inflation suggests the need for monetary tightening and fiscal austerity measures, which might damage economic activity in the short-run. Actually, considering the current weak economic activity and the low consumer and business confidence, economic activity is already expected to be weak.

Monetary and fiscal policies will trail the opposite direction in the worst-case scenario of water/energy rationing. This is the unknown variable, which seems to be more and more likely with the lack of rain. I´m quite pessimist at this time and i hope I´m wrong about the chaotic scenario of lack of water (in São Paulo state) and energy rationing all over Brazil. If we are complaining about the weak growth rate currently, next year will be even weaker, with possibility of long-lived recession. In this situation, investment plans will shrink even more...

World Cup is coming soon! Of course I hope Brazilian team will make it to the final and get the so desired trophy! But regardless the final outcome, I really hope the whole event occurs with no big problems.

Impressions about a specific argentinian region

Shame on me since there has been a long time I don´t write on this blog, but I´m back and I commit myself to be more disciplined.

On my blog return, I would like to talk about a very recent travel to Argentina. I´ve been to Patagônia visiting 3 relatively small towns: El Calafate, El Chaltén and Ushuaia. The later is the most famous one known as the "Tierra del Fuego". In Argentina, as we had already been told, there is a lively FX black market in which we can exchange Dollar, Euro and even brazilian Real for an advantageous rate (better than the official one). This is a sympton of an economy in which there is constant expectation of Peso devaluation under a situation of increasing inflation rates. Actually, as well as the official FX rate is not considered for FX transactions, the effective inflation rate seems to be way above the official one.

I would have to stay longer to have a better impression of the economic situation of the region, however, the few days I´ve been there let me the impression Patagonian population seems not to suffer from the economic crisis. There are two possible explanations for that: Firstly, given the Peso devaluation trend, it has been cheaper and cheaper to travel to Argentina, and obviously touristic cities are the most benefitted ones. Secondly, Nestor Kirchner (husband of the current president Cristina) was governor of Provincia de Santa Cruz, which is located in Patagonia. In  this sense, Patagonia may have been benefitted somehow during the recent presidential mandates. But this is just an impression from a Foreigner who has been there for a few days, and not necessarily fits to reality, thus I should beg the argentinians pardon if I´m partially wrong on my impressions.

Anyway, travelling is always an interesting manner to have a closer look to the socioeconomic situation of a country, which may be somehow different from what is reported by the international media.