Era Agnesia Saragih, a teacher from the ABC Kids Kindergarten at Kota Wisata, has finished the HEI School Diploma Programme. She started the program in January 2021 and obtained her certification on December 15, 2021.
The HEI School Diploma is an online teacher training course from Finland. It consists of 10 curriculums, which were: How Children Learn, Child Observation – Documentation and Evaluation, Play and Learning, Children’s Right, Learning Areas and Transversal Skills, Collaborative Inquiry-Based Learning, Inclusion – Diversity and Special Needs, Pedagogical Planning, Working with Families, and Teacher’s Professional Development.
” The HEI Schools Teacher Diploma program was created by experienced Finnish teachers in partnership with the University of Helsinki. Through this teacher’s training course, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of Finnish early childhood education. When implemented, the inspiring play-based pedagogy and research-based learning materials will undoubtedly benefit students’ development.” said Ms. Era.
According to Ms. Era, the education system in Indonesia and Finland differs in terms of its culture, policies, and languages. However, with a few adjustments, such differences do not deter ABC Kids School from adopting certain HEI schools’ teaching curriculums.
One of the differences is the age at which a child can enter elementary school. In Finland, the minimum age at which a child can start their formal education is 7. Although the age requirement policy is changing in Indonesia, children can enter formal education at age six or lower, depending on the circumstances.
To this, Ms. Era added that she is interested in Finland’s curriculum, which emphasizes fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and socio-emotional skills. The Finnish curriculum allocates a massive amount of time doing outdoor activities. It focuses on children’s gross motor skills, such as dancing, balancing, jumping, climbing, swimming, and bouncing. Children are encouraged to spend a minimum of 4 hours doing such activities, regardless of whether it is snowing or raining.
The education system in Finland also focuses on students’ holistics growth as opposed to stressing over standardized testings. “The children learn to explore, express their ideas, and play. That way, they obtain new abilities and discover how to solve problems independently,” Ms. Era stated.
“In Finland, cultures and heritage are introduced to children via games and cuisines to name a few as opposed to the traditional cramming and memorizing information. This is something that we can adopt in our future curriculum.” added Ms. Era.
It has been written in various articles of the many reasons why Finland’s education system is considered as the best in the world (weforum.org). As the world keeps on changing, so should our mindset be. Here at ABC Kids, our educators are life-long learners who are keeping ourselves well-informed with the recent discoveries. Constantly, equipping our educators with the relevant international certificates is one way we are committed to providing the best education for your children.
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