EdTech business opportunities in Helsinki
The future of hybrid learning is made in Helsinki.
The future of hybrid learning is made in Helsinki.
We, the world’s happiest nation, believe that lifelong learning is a key to a better world. Finland is a place where innovation, collaboration, one of Europe’s strongest tech hubs, the world’s best education system, and digital readiness together create an excellent environment to develop new solutions for the global edtech market. Moreover, the City of Helsinki supports collaborative innovation via Testbed Helsinki and Helsinki Education Hub.
The country is ranked number 1 for skills development at work, and the government has invested in a program to develop a policy for lifelong learning. The current Government has an ambitious vision for 2025: Finland will be a country where everybody wants to learn more all the time.
We at Helsinki Business Hub help you to navigate the Helsinki edtech scene. Our team is ready to help you whether you look to expand your business search for investment, business, or R&D opportunities. Free of charge.
Helsinki is a place where a strong startup ecosystem, technological capabilities, and the world’s best education meet. This has made Helsinki an excellent place to develop new innovative edtech solutions.
The edtech companies in Finland have a unique opportunity to develop their products in collaboration with the users: pupils, students and teachers. The co-creation process is supported on the municipal level and has a clear path and a ready set of documents and templates making it easier for the teachers and the startups to focus on the co-design process itself.
Active participation from the pupils’ side provides valuable feedback and new ideas to the companies, at the same time developing the children’s and the teachers’ entrepreneurial and ICT skills. The Agile Piloting program is based on the schools’ real needs, and startups apply to pre-defined open challenges collected from schools. Moreover, the City of Helsinki aims to facilitate development activities in schools via Testbed Helsinki.
Finland has a reputation of the home of world-class education due to a proven track-record at the top of international rankings. Finnish education is praised for its equality, excellent learning outcomes, highly competent and motivated teachers, emphasis on pedagogy, innovative teaching methods and strong ICT sector.
Finland’s universities are among the highest performing in the world. The country is ranked number 1 for skills development at work, and the government has invested into a program to develop a policy for lifelong learning (Sitra).
All that success while ranking as the happiest country in the world for three years in a row. The current Government has an ambitious vision for 2025: Finland will be a country where everybody wants to learn more all the time.
To get a better picture of the basic education system in Helsinki, refer to this page.
Finland has a long history of participation and promotion of adult education. Adult education is also very popular, and the participation rate is high in international terms. In Finland, the rate of adults participating in learning activities is among the highest (28.5%) and almost triples the European average (11.1%) (Eurostat).
The Finnish education system supports lifelong learning in multiple ways. First and foremost, the education system has no dead ends.
The government’s education policy covers also targets and means for adult education and lifelong learning. The Finnish government has launched reform concerning lifelong learning in 2020.
Active participation in liberal adult education. Annually 1.1 million citizens take part in offered courses. Courses are nearly free of charge.
Finnish pedagogy is constantly developing based on research. The latest National Curriculum has a strong focus on fostering the 21st century skills. All teachers in Finland hold a master’s degree and enjoy professional freedom and trust. They are encouraged to experiment with innovative approaches to teaching and learning, such as inquiry-based learning, phenomenon-based learning and use of education technologies.
The Faculty of Education at the University of Helsinki has outstandingly strong research. Top quality teacher training, continuous professional development, and active teacher community sharing best practices between peers makes Finland the top country to see the future of education and pedagogy.
Finnish edtech ecosystem has rapidly developed in the past 5 years and is now including all necessary ecosystem actors and providing services for all stages of the edtech startup pipeline. It includes an accelerator, a VC fund, an industry organization, events, and communities all focused specifically on edtech. The government supports the sector via the national Education Finland program and various projects such as The Smart Learning Environments for the Future. In Helsinki, edtech developers will congregate in Helsinki Education Hub, starting from Spring 2021.
The strong ecosystem brings results: Finland is the country with the most amount of edtech startups (14 out of 50) on the list of the Nordic&Baltic’s top 50, though the country is not the largest in the region. This tells about the quality and strength of Finnish education innovations.
A good startup ecosystem is a prerequisite for a successful edtech ecosystem. Helsinki is ranked the 4th best emerging startup ecosystem in the world (by Startup Genome). It hosts Slush – the biggest startup event in Europe, a Maria01 startup hub with over 1000 members, the largest in Europe business angel network, and numerous accelerators, incubators, and VC funds. The Finnish startup scene is known for its amazing sense of community: Global Startup Ecosystem report ranked Helsinki number one in terms of its local connectedness (= sense of community). Helsinki attracts highly competent tech talent due to the global success of ICT companies like Nokia. Low-hierarchy, startup culture, excellent English language skills, and international talent make a vibrant and empowering startup ecosystem.
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