For several years, international interest has been significant towards Finland’s very good results in the PISA tests. Several international delegations have come to Finland, to Finnish universities and schools in order to find out the ‘secrets’ of Finland’s success in Pisa. We do know that there is no single answer to that: there is no ‘silver bullet’.

In this lecture professor Alava studies one of the reasons by explaining the historical development of Finland starting from the Second World War up to this day. Following his arguments we learn that during the some 50-60 years, Finland has progress enormously from a very poor agrarian country to one of the most competitive countries with excellent learning outcomes in the PISA studies. The arguments presented in the lecture strongly show the importance of education in the nation building of Finland. The presentation of the development of Finland ends into a look into the future with a new role of future creation to schools and teachers.