This year’s Program for International Student Assessment (Pisa) results offered a rude disappointment for Finland, when it saw its global ranking slip sharply in reading, science and math, according to Yle in English. Of all the OECD countries, Finland’s Pisa result saw the biggest drop from the previous year.
While part of Finland is still in mourning due to the result, it didn’t take long for Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen to directly pin the blame on immigrants for the poor Pisa result.
Immonen claims on his Facebook wall below: ”The long-term work of immigration and multicultural fanatics to make Finland more ‘diverse’ has bore fruit. Immigrants played a signifiant role in [the worse] Pisa results even if consensus politicians and officials claim the contrary. The differences in reading, science and math between immigrants and Finns in the Pisa test are mind-boggling.”
Folks, here’s a member of Finland’s third-largest party in parliament scapegoating all immigrants for the disappointing Pisa result. Should we be surprised taking into account that Immonen is chairman of the far-right Suomen Sisu association and predicts a war between Islam and white Christian Europe?
What Immonen’s comment shows repeatedly is not his hostility against immigrants in Finland but the ambivalent stance of the PS despite countless assurances by the party’s leader, Timo Soini, that racism isn’t an issue.
Taking into account that the Euro MP elections in May are crucial for the survival of the PS, it’s clear that MP’s like Immonen will continue to turn on the anti-immigration heat while Soini turns a blind eye.
Minister of Education Krista Kiuru was quoted as saying that we shouldn’t try to find explanations for the worse Pisa result by comparing the results of those so-called students with immigrant backgrounds and native Finns.
All in all, 15% of the students that took the test weren’t native white Finns.
If immigrant students lag behind their Finnish classmates, certainly the first important job of a world-class educational system like Finland’s should be to find the causes.
How well, for example, does Finland’s school system educate children with immigrant backgrounds?