Finland ranked seventh in the world in OECD’s student assessment chart in 2018, well above the UK and the United States, where there is a mix of private and state education

  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think private schools should be banned. Too easy for the rich or even upper income class to gut public schools when you don’t use them. Everyone getting the same education chance is what I call equal opportunity.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same for health care. If the rich had no other option but to depend on the public system, they’d be more likely to ensure it’s properly funded.

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Finland does actually have a private sector for health care.

        The difference tends to be in how fast you get appointments for non-critical health issues. If I have a cough I’m worried about, I can go to my employer provided healthcare and speak to a doctor via phone in literally 20 minutes.

        The public system atm would diagnose me with an automated quiz and determine my case to be “non-urgent”. I would eventually get a doctors appointment, if I’m persistent and find all the right numbers to call, online forms to fill in, etc.

        If the matter is urgent however, the public system takes things very seriously. And private sector doctors will even forward you to a public hospital in some cases, if they don’t have the staff or equipment needed to help you in a particular case. With concussions for example, I’ve just walked into the local ER and been taken care of right away. If you need an ambulance, you don’t need to weigh your life against bankruptcy.

        The public system is also efficient (except when it isn’t). That means you won’t always see staff spend their time on bedside manner. Their job is to keep you healthy, not happy (unless you’re there for mental issues). In my experience the private sector has a higher standard for customer service, because you’re not just a patient when you pay for your care. Your satisfaction matters more since they actually care about getting repeat customers.

        Meanwhile, public healthcare wold prefer you never come back, which is sometimes a good thing, and sometimes bad.

        I use both sides of the system, and as I already mentioned, the two sides inter-operate in many cases. While it’s been a huge mess at times, Finland is investing in a patient-data-management system called APOTTI which lets you switch doctors and care-providers seamlessly taking your patient-history with you. I once got x-rayd by my employee healthcare, then got sent to a hand surgeon in the public sector so I could get the diagnosis from those x-rays the same day. I left the private hospital and walked into the public one like they were operated by the same company. It’s amazing.

        • Quokka@quokk.au
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          1 year ago

          Poor Finland.

          Imagine if the funding being used so your employer could get you to see a doctor in 20 minutes, was available for everyone, as a public service.

          Instead you’ve split your healthcare in two, and as such you’re going to have people poached away from offering the best care to everyone.

          • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            The system isn’t that split. In fact, it can work the other way around, in that a public doctor can send you to a private one when warranted, and the public system will then cover the cost.

            In emergencies you can also walk into the ER of a private hospital and have the cost covered under the public system.

            If you want to pay for a doctor to calm your hypochondria right now while small talking about something meaningless… Why not?

            Also, my employer providing me with healthcare, isn’t optional, it’s legally mandated. If you have a job, you have the option of going to whatever private provider your employer has contracted. This is to make sure whatever sick leave you end up needing, is taken care of in a timely fashion so you can get back to work asap.

            The only reason you can’t just walk into a public hospital and see a doctor the way you can with a private one, is that the public sector will actually make sure you need the care then and there before spending its resources on you. It’s triage, on a national scale.

            The private and public sectors are integrated and inter-operable. This means the private sector hasn’t become a price-gouging insurance mine-field. Instead it’s more like an extension of the public system, serving as a more expensive but expedited channel, used where warranted.

          • Srovex@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I guess the rationale is that you give precedence to the people paying for the healthcare (middleclass workers) to get them back to contributing to workforce (and earning those tax euros) as soon as possible. Also the decision is done by the companies (trying to keep their employees in working condition, also a big perk when employees are comparing different employers) and not the government so you can’t just decide to move the money like you just described.

            • redfellow@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              Companies are by law required to offer health care. So when you’re working, you can choose which to use. Often work place healthcare is for those more urgent, yet smaller things. If you get cancer, you go to the public system or pay for private care.

              But everyone here can get free care, which is the key take. You can just get some things faster via the workplace, or you can also pay to get a team of specialists or whatnot.

    • pousserapiere@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well, there are edge cases for private schools that would not make sense being solved by public schools. I moved a lot in my life (still do), and having access to schools in one of my children 's main language is an important thing for them. Those schools are still following local regulations though

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Even if nationwide absolute mediocre student body was a goal banning private schools wouldn’t achieve it.

      Next you would have to ban tutoring companies, after that you would have to ban test prep, after that private tutors, after that you would need restrictions on funding for all schools (which wouldn’t work since not all schools have the exact same funding needs), you would still have advantages. One kid is closer to the library, one kid has a parent who was a teacher, one kid has a stay at home parent with the resources to help them with homework, etc.

      Nothing short of an absolute police state of fairness would be able to achieve this.

    • cricket97@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah let’s pull exceptional students down to the baseline. Every child should be forced to go through the government approved curriculum, nothing can go wrong with that.

      Private schools are based. Much better education than public schools. Obviously I don’t want public schools to be gutted, so let’s make laws preventing that rather than preventing children from getting a good education that public school will never be able to provide.

      People here are way to authoritarian.

      • adriaan@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Look at the Netherlands for a good example then. Private schools aren’t banned but public schools are so good even the princesses go to them. You’re just so used to public schools being underfunded that you think they can’t work. The reason you’d want to ban private schools is because it creates an incentive for the rich and powerful to fix your shitty public schools.

        • cricket97@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Why do we need to ban private schools if Netherlands was able to create good public schools without doing so? There is a limit of how good you can make public schools when you have no selection criteria. Private schools are based. I like that there is an option outside of government run institutions.

      • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You have gifted programs in the public school. Your thinking shows the exact problem, that public schools can only “pull students down”. You can only see public schools as bad instead of, you know, funding them to be good. How about funding them so they pull everyone up, huh?

        Then you go on to conspiratorial thinking to vilify, gasp, public schools.

        • cricket97@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          A genius being around average people will pull them down. It’s a good thing to concentrate our smartest children in an environment that lets them learn with equally intelligent peers. There might not be enough hyper intelligent kids in a geographical region to warrant the resources required to fully support that minority of students. Nothing I said was conspiratorial.

          • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Dude, gifted programs. Advanced classes. They are together. This is really easy. Any reasonably sized school will have enough to fill out an advanced class.

            And this ensures all students can live up to their potential! How about that? Instead of only the ones that can afford stupid high tuition. Who have to pass screening, and wait times, and wait lists, and then long commutes. If you want more advanced people in society, the way you do that is opening the doors to more people, at all points in their life, right where they live.

            And what the other guy said about selective public schools.

            And yes you’re on about government approved education dogwhistle and authoritarianism. Dude, you’re right down conspiratorial thinking.

          • V H@lemmy.stad.social
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            1 year ago

            There are over 160 selective secondary state/public schools in England. Being state run does not prevent the existence of selective schools.