This is the best school in the world

Last March, the International Symposium on Applied Innovation (IMAT 2018) was held in Valencia, organized by the ESIC business school. This edition has set as a starting point educational innovation “as a strategy for the competitiveness of a country in its different productive sectors”. The event aims to be a space for knowledge and debate, which deals with experiences in the field of teaching, educational innovation and the incorporation of digital transformation and its link with the productive sectors (proposing experiences and differentiating models and analysing new business models). The director of the Saunalahti school, considered the best school in the world, participated in this event.

As its organizers define it, it is an event that integrates the trinomial between institutions, Academy and Business, for several reasons. Among them, he cites that “the University must prioritize the generation of knowledge, which is an elaborate result of previous experiences, expert theories, conclusions and synergies of national and international interuniversity work that can contribute to progress.” “But in order to achieve this integration,” they add, “it is necessary that as a University (as researchers) we are close to the company and society, working with it, training its future human capitals and generating the business fabric.”

Among the speakers attending last year’s symposium, IMAT 2017, was Hanna Sarakorpi, director of the so-called ‘Best School in the World’, the Saunalahti school, in Finland. His talk was attended by the economist Fernando Castelló, consultant and business advisor at C.S. Consultores de Negocio, who gives us the main keys to the model of the Saunalahti school, the best school in the world:

1. They have an individualized training plan for each child. Analysis of the student: who they are, what their strengths are, what they can do, what they need to reinforce.
2. The student has an active role in his or her own learning process.
3. Importance of early instruction of other languages (two hours a week).
4. Use of play as a vehicle for transmission (and motivation) in the experiential learning process.
5. Importance of the environment and the flexibility of classroom spaces. Also to mix the students.
6. Reasonable teaching load, not excessive.
7. Two hours a week of compulsory Economics from the age of seven to learn how the world works.
8. Methodologies outside the classroom (in nature) very important to improve motivation and involvement.
9. Perspective of the teacher as a mediating agent through an adaptive interaction.
10. To promote collaboration in the educational community, articulated on pedagogical leadership.