(Yicai Global) March 9 -- Finnish education has long been considered world-class, with a unique system achieving results that belie its size and population of 5.5 million.  Graduation from academic or vocational high schools stands at 93 percent, 66 percent of Finns go on to higher education, the highest rate in Europe, with a leaner spend of around 30 percent less per head than the United States.

A delegation from the Finnish National Agency for Education, together with several leading professional educators, consultants and representatives of leading EdTech companies was invited to Shanghai to discuss cooperation possibilities in the sector. 

Technology has freed schools and individuals to learn in new and inspirational ways through "a selection of next-generation learning games, platforms and applications which combine pedagogy and the newest technology, artificial intelligence, immersive and virtual reality, robotics and 3D printing," said Olli-Pekka Heinonen, director general of the Finnish National Agency for Education.

These companies included Mobie Academy, a comprehensive digital training platform, Futurecode Ltd., producers of Dibidogs, a popular animation seen by 50 million children worldwide targeted at early learning and Graphogame, an early literacy game designed with input from university dons around the world.

Without private schools, every institution is state-funded, no teachers hold less than a master's degree, classroom teaching methods are autonomously chosen by teachers and children are encouraged to play freely. Pre-school, unlike its American or European counterparts is high-quality and universal and college tuition is free in Finland. Dr. Lauri Tuomi, programme director of Education Finland attributes the success of education in the country to a widely liberal system in that schools and teachers retain a certain autonomy and are not dictated to from the top down. Thus, effective teaching and learning methods can be implemented and refined unburdened by bureaucracy.  

Aside from these factors, technology has come to play an increasingly important role in 21st-century education, greatly enhancing sound pedagogical foundations, as Yicai Global learned in our exclusive interviews with Mobie Academy, Futurecode and Graphogame.