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>>Pasi: If you look at the
15-year-olds, or 16-year-old Fins

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who are leaving the basic
school, most of them have been

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in special education
throughout their schooling.

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Which means that special education
is actually nothing special.

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So it's you are a special child
or student if you haven't been,

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if you haven't ever
used special services.

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>>Pasi: We are putting a lot of
emphasis on the early detection

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of any difficulties and problems that
the students in our schools may have.

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And this is a very different
policy to many other countries

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where these measures are designed in
a way that they are implemented only

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when the problems have
emerged and are too visible.

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But we don't' think
like this in Finland.

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I think we believe in this early
intervention to make sure that those

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who are likely to be in trouble
will be recognized early,

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and provided help and support
as quickly as possible.

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>>Olli: We as subject teachers
cooperate with the special teacher

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in cases where we see

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that an individual student has
problems with their studies.

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It might be problems with
concentrating on a theme.

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It might be reading and
listening difficulties,

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especially in languages and math.

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What we do is that we
contact the special teacher

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at the very early moment.

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We call it the first intervention.

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We talk with the special teacher,
and try to arrange a time that she

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or he could be able to come and
join me as a subject teacher

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to my classroom, and then
focus on the problem.

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>>Olli: The special teacher is
available for a couple of hours.

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And then she picks the
student to a separate classroom

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and helps him or her there.

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And we also make an
individual learning plan

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for that individual student.

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And by taking these
measures, we try to guarantee

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that no one is lagging behind.

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>>Olli: The student welfare
team gathers on a weekly basis,

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and subject teachers inform
the group with different cases.

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They might be bullying, they
might be skipping classes,

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they might be learning difficulties,

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it might behavioral
problems, all kinds of things.

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>>Olli: And then these individual
problems are dealt with case-by-case

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in this weekly meeting that
every school in Finland has.

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>>Merja: Well, a student welfare
group deals with any kinds

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of problems that we see in a school
having to do with problems at home

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or at learning disabilities,
multi-cultural problems.

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The main value of our student
welfare group is to interrupt as soon

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as possible, problems involved.

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>>Pasi: With this policy, we are
trying to really make it easy

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for everybody to say, "Yes, I have
some areas where I need help now.

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Is there anybody who can help?"

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rather than trying
to hide these things.

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And in many cases, when you do this
in the later years they will come

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and accumulate even
more difficult problems.

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So I think with this, we have been
able to positively affect both the-

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the equity of the system, and
also the quality of the system.