I. Matti Meri, a teacher-trainer at Helsinki University, was a teacher at the time.
II. By the time comprehensives reached the more populous south, teachers were eager to join in what was clearly a roaring success.
III. “Grammar-school teachers were quite afraid of the reforms,” he recalls.
IV. “They used to teach only one-third of the students. But the comprehensive schools used almost the same curriculum as the grammar schools had—and we discovered that the two- thirds were mostly able to cope with it.”
V. Comprehensive schools were introduced in 1972 in the sparsely populated north, and then over the next four years in the rest of the country.