2 Why is collaboration between academia and decision makers essential?
The Mayor of Helsinki recently unveiled a new city strategy for 2025-2029 (City of Helsinki, 2025), stating, “We rely on research data in the development of our operations.” While we undertake our own research, we firmly believe that collaboration with local universities is vital for enhancing and developing our initiatives. Helsinki aspires to be a pioneering force in impact research and its application for the betterment of children and young people.
We recognise that education constitutes a significant investment in the future, with half of the city budget dedicated to educational services. We must ensure our resources are allocated and utilised effectively. For example, we are channelling needs-based funding into early childhood education and care (ECEC) and schools in less affluent socio-economic districts. In Helsinki, our goal is to alleviate the adverse effects of regional segregation on educational institutions and learners through targeted funding in the education sector. A critical question arises: how can we ascertain that utilising these resources effectively reduces disparities?
The phenomena of polarisation and segregation are escalating challenges in Helsinki. While our educational ethos emphasises principles of equality and equity, the latest PISA research (2022) indicates that basic education is falling short in bridging the gaps.
As educational providers, our challenge is to determine whether our structures and pedagogical practices have a positive impact on children’s growth and learning outcomes. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are integral to our broader evaluation framework. These experiments furnish education providers and policymakers with valuable insights on enhancing educational practices and improving learning outcomes.
The findings presented by Larsen and colleagues have significant implications for Helsinki: interventions aimed at teachers in schools and educators in daycare and preschool settings are markedly more effective than those directed at children or their parents. Fully manualised interventions tend also to be less effective than non-manualised or partially manualised ones. Results show that language outcomes typically exhibit substantially lower effect sizes than those in mathematics, whereas other outcomes, often related to vocabulary acquisition, demonstrate larger effects. Interventions designed for children under school age (preschoolers) are more effective than those targeting older children. Notably, while interventions that prioritise quality enhancement generally yield lower effects than those focused on increasing quantity, those emphasising structural quality tend to be more effective than those centred on process quality or learning formats.
Interestingly, the evaluation design (RCT versus other methodologies) does not significantly influence effect sizes. This indicates that, on average, non-experimental evaluation designs do not substantially overestimate or underestimate true effect sizes (as determined by RCTs) in our sample. However, this does not imply the absence of bias in individual studies, as different forms of bias may take various forms and potentially offset each other on average.
Language assessments yield significantly poorer outcomes compared to mathematics and other measures. Interventions aimed at preschool children are more cost-effective than those focused on older children and young adults, especially when delivered in daycare settings. Additionally, interventions targeting educators are more cost-effective, whereas fully manualised interventions tend to be less so.
To achieve the objectives stipulated in our City Strategy—that every local school in Helsinki is a high-quality educational institution—we require a more extensive, research-informed understanding of the effectiveness of routine practices in schools and early childhood education.
To ensure that every child and young person acquires the necessary skills and competencies to succeed in further education and professional life, we must deepen our understanding of how best to support our schools and teachers in choosing the most effective pedagogical approaches. It is important to note that in Finland, teachers have considerable pedagogical autonomy in selecting classroom tools and methods, a freedom we respect and value.
We are particularly eager to deepen our understanding of how to improve the learning experiences and developmental outcomes of disadvantaged children and young people.