Problem / need / context
Finland’s 2018 VET reform made transversal skill development formally inseparable from technical assessment. Every vocational skill criterion in Finnish upper secondary VET now implicitly covers applicable transversal skills — a task assessment may consider the student’s teamwork, communication, or problem-solving abilities alongside technical execution. OECD This means that the tutoring teacher’s weekly conversations about self-awareness, team dynamics, and personal development are not extracurricular — they are directly connected to the competence assessments that determine the student’s qualification.
This integration is one of the most important features of the Finnish model for the VETCompass project. It answers a question that any VET coordinator faces: Where does self-awareness development fit in an already packed vocational curriculum? The Finnish answer is: everywhere, because transversal competences are not a separate subject — they are the dimension of depth that makes every technical subject meaningful.
Intervention
Finnish teachers are mentors rather than authority figures, forming strong relationships with their students based on mutual respect. They take time to get to know students personally, understanding their needs and motivations. Techclass: this is not a soft aspiration — it is built into the role definition. A tutoring teacher who remains with the same group for two to four years, meeting weekly, inevitably knows each student in ways that no single-subject teacher ever could. They know who struggles on Monday mornings and why. They know which student is quietly gifted and under-confident, and which is confidently performing competence they do not yet have.
This relational depth is what enables the seed of doubt that Bersotti describes — the gentle, well-timed observation that disrupts a student’s self-image just enough to open the possibility of self-examination. It can only be planted by someone the student trusts. And trust, in the Finnish model, is built across years of weekly contact — not through a single workshop or a termly check-in.
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Each student in Finland’s VET system is supported by both a workplace mentor and a school-based teacher or tutor. This dual guidance system helps the student stay on track, solve problems, and develop both technical and soft skills including communication, time management, and self-awareness. Techclass The school-based tutoring teacher and the workplace mentor together create what the research calls a holistic guidance network — surrounding the student with multiple relationships of trust and challenge, each operating at a different register but all oriented toward the same goal: the student’s growing capacity to know and direct themselves.
Outcomes
In upper secondary VET in Finland, vocational qualifications include 60 hours of dedicated guidance, which includes time with the workplace supervisor. Study counsellors also act as liaisons between students, parents, supervisors, and other welfare coordinators, and the courses explicitly address planning study programmes, learning strategies, self-awareness, further education, and work opportunities. Fulbrightinfinland The 60-hour entitlement is a minimum guarantee, not a ceiling: the tutoring teacher’s weekly sessions add substantially to this.
Finland was rated the world leader in generic skills teaching and learning as evaluated by the Worldwide Educating for the Future Index 2019. Finnish VET is highly regarded: 90% of Finns think it offers high-quality learning. In 2020, 72% of all upper secondary students in Finland chose VET programmes — significantly higher than the OECD average of 42%. Sheffield Hallam University. These figures reflect a system in which VET is not a consolation route but a respected path—and that reputation is built, at least in part, on a model that treats students’ inner development as seriously as their technical training..