Finnish pedagogy vs the Israeli education system
Finland and Israel both invest heavily in education and both sit inside the OECD's PISA testing programme, but they have taken different paths to get there. Finland leans on teacher trust and low stakes assessment, while Israel's system has leaned more on testing and school choice, with a wider internal gap in results.
- In PISA 2022, Israeli 15 year olds scored 458 in maths, 474 in reading and 465 in science, each below the OECD averages of 472, 476 and 485.
- Finland performed strongly in science in PISA 2022, on par with the strongest OECD systems, continuing a long run of high performance since Finland's PISA results first drew global attention.
- Israel shows a wide internal gap: high achieving pupils in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem perform on a par with strong European and East Asian systems, while pupils in peripheral towns and lower income communities score far lower.
- Israel's system includes distinct state, state religious, ultra Orthodox and Arab sector school streams, a structural diversity Finland's more unified comprehensive school model does not share.
Two different bets on what drives good results
Finland's education policy since the 1970s has bet on highly trained, trusted teachers, a common national curriculum with real classroom flexibility, and deliberately low stakes testing until the end of upper secondary school. The OECD's own analysis credits this combination, alongside strong school based curriculum design, with much of Finland's sustained performance.
Israel's system has instead put more weight on external testing, parental choice between school streams, and, in recent years, an active policy debate over how much accountability and competition should drive improvement. The OECD's PISA analysis notes that systems relying mainly on competition and test based accountability have generally not shown the same gains as Finland's trust based model.
What the PISA numbers show, and do not show
Israel's 2022 PISA scores sat modestly below the OECD average across maths, reading and science, while Finland remained one of the stronger performing systems, particularly in science. These are single snapshots rather than a full verdict on either system, but they are consistent with a longer pattern in the data.
The more striking figure is internal spread. Within Israel, pupils in wealthier, more urban areas such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem perform close to top international systems, while pupils in peripheral and lower income areas lag well behind. Finland, by contrast, has historically shown much less variation between its strongest and weakest performing schools, reflecting a system with less school selectivity built in.
Structural differences behind the numbers
Israel's school system is organised into separate streams, state, state religious, ultra Orthodox and Arab sector schools, each with its own curriculum emphasis and degree of state oversight. This reflects Israel's religious and social diversity but also means pupils can have quite different educational experiences depending on which stream they attend.
Finland's comprehensive school system, peruskoulu, is far more uniform: almost all pupils attend a local, publicly funded school following the same national core curriculum through the end of basic education, with little formal streaming before upper secondary school.
What each system can learn from the other
Israel's education debate already includes voices pointing to Finland's model of teacher professionalism and lower stakes assessment as a possible way to narrow its internal equity gap, rather than relying mainly on testing and competition.
Finland, for its part, operates in a far more linguistically and religiously homogeneous context than Israel, so some caution is warranted before assuming its exact model would transfer unchanged. The more transferable lesson is less about copying Finland's specific policies and more about the underlying principle: investing in teacher quality and reducing early testing pressure tends to raise both average performance and equity together.
Finland's results show what trust in teachers and low stakes testing can achieve. Israel's internal gap shows what happens when strong performance in some areas coexists with much weaker performance in others.
Frequently asked questions
Does Finland simply outperform Israel in PISA?
In the 2022 results, Finland scored above the OECD average and Israel scored slightly below it across maths, reading and science, but both are single data points. The more informative difference is Israel's wide internal spread between its strongest and weakest performing regions.
Why is there such a large gap within Israel's own results?
Much of it tracks socioeconomic and geographic lines: pupils in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem perform close to strong European and East Asian systems, while pupils in peripheral towns and lower income communities score considerably lower, reflecting uneven resourcing and opportunity across regions.
Are Israel and Finland's school systems structured similarly?
Not closely. Israel is organised into distinct state, state religious, ultra Orthodox and Arab sector streams, while Finland runs a largely uniform comprehensive school system, peruskoulu, that almost all pupils attend regardless of background.
Could Israeli schools adopt Finnish pedagogy directly?
Individual schools can adapt Finnish classroom practices, such as more phenomenon based learning and lower stakes assessment in the early years, within their existing stream and curriculum, much as OPPI supports schools doing this in other countries through affiliation.
Related reading
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