The University of Oulu (UO) passed the audit conducted by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC). The university received special praise from the audit team for its key role and well-established position in the regional knowledge, innovation, and competence creation ecosystem. UO’s commitment to promoting multidisciplinary learning and studies is strong.

The audit team praised the Police University College for the design and delivery of working life-oriented police training and a strong ability to identify their own areas for improvement through an effective and systematic quality system.

Karelia University of Applied Sciences passed the audit conducted by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC). Karelia UAS received praise from the audit team for its quality system. The quality system is widely known in the UAS community, and the information produced by it is used diversely, especially in the management of Karelia UAS. In addition, the audit team regarded the strong link of education programme planning and RDI with Karelia UAS’s strategy and regional development as one of the UAS’s strengths.

The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) will publish several sets of topical evaluation results in spring 2024. The themes of the publications will include an evaluation of education programmes in early childhood education and care, new forms of student counselling introduced as compulsory education was extended, and an overview of learning outcomes in Swedish-language schools. 

Anticipation of skills needs and information resources related to education have been improved in recent years. However, there is room for improvement in the way this information is used to reform the qualification system.

Almost half of the new students at universities of applied sciences (UAS) have graduated from a vocational school. In the context of UAS studies, these students’ strengths include industry-specific competence, work experience and workplace skills. Deficiencies in the students’ competence are typically related to communication skills, foreign languages and mathematics.

Many 9th-grade students process even simple numerical problems significantly longer than is typical for their age group. On average, the lowest-performing students were at a sixth-grade level in terms of fluency, but a third of poorly performing students were at levels 3-5. 

The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) will publish several sets of topical evaluation results in winter 2023–2024. The themes of these publications include comprehensive school students’ learning outcomes, new forms of student counselling introduced as compulsory education was extended, and the competence produced by vocational education and training in relation to the requirements of studies at universities of applied sciences.