"The final paradox of Finnish education only dawned on me when I received the girls’ school calendars. At first, it looked a little thin. School began at 7:30 every morning and ended at 1 p.m. No lesson appeared to last longer than 45 minutes, after which 15 minutes was given for a break. The Finns appeared to have several names for this down time. Besides “break” there was “lunch,” “long break,” “breakies,” “mini break,” “extracurricular activities” and (my personal favourite) “Golden time.”
The theory is that children learn just as much during unstructured play as they do inside a formal classroom setting – arguably more. The Finnish system flies in the face of the logic that poor student performance can be somehow cured by increasing class time. In Finland, students don’t begin school until the age of 7. The school days are shorter and students are almost never given homework."