In 2024 the IDL Network posted two articles about Yrityskylä (literally “business village”), an innovative learning module in the Finnish curriculum that transcends disciplinary boundaries, in which level 6 and level 9 pupils learn about working life – business, finances, entrepreneurship and how society functions in practice – and apply for a job. One post (November 2024) captured the experience of Yrityskylä as reported by a level 6 pupil at the Finnish International School of Tampere. The second post (December 2024) is a teacher’s insightful perspective, courtesy of our Finnish correspondent Miika Lehtovaara (also at the International School of Tampere).

A further perspective about Yrityskylä was published in the Financial Times (January 6, 2025) as part of the paper’s Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign. The article – “Finland fuels children’s future with financial literacy and food” complements the two Finnish perspectives.

What forms might an educational perspective and programme take on financial literacy and working life in the Scottish curriculum? What knowledge, skills, mindsets and competences are required? Are there practical examples that might be shared on the IDL Network?

The introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence in 2004 aimed to broaden and diversify education in the Scottish curriculum. In practice secondary curricula and qualifications have remained dominantly subject-driven and subject to traditional high-stakes national standardised testing. Young learners continue to make subject and qualifications choices around age 14 – a very young age to be making important decisions that are likely to influence or define their longer-term and post-school learning pathways and employment outcomes. The higher education (HE) system also strongly influences young people’s choices of secondary subjects and qualifications through its admissions processes. To what extent are school qualifications and tertiary education pathways in lockstep?

Human knowledge has grown ever more rapidly through the 20th and early 21st century and is now accelerating through the application of AI. What now counts as important knowledge for learners, teachers and employers? Global challenges – health and wellbeing, climate change, food production, clean energy, security, conflict, migration, AI, employment and challenges to democracy and truth itself - all these transcend traditional subject boundaries around which our education system has been constructed and sustained through subject-led qualifications. The pace of change will only accelerate. For better or worse, the 20th and early 21st century ‘liberal’ world order as we know it – social, economic, cultural and political – is disappearing. Many in our society have not enjoyed its benefits, creating social and political divisions. Are learner pathways, and the knowledge, skills, competences and mindsets acquired through primary, secondary and tertiary education and training, still coherent and relevant to the rapidly changing nature and demands of employment and life in the uncertain world of the 21st century? In 2025 the reform of our education system to align with this changing world of challenge, opportunity and employment grows ever more important. A key decision around whether to adopt the recommendations of the Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment (2023) on the reform of the qualifications will impact future learner pathways through secondary into tertiary education and/or employment.

Our education system needs re-imagining. While subjects - the ‘pillars’ of the curriculum - remain important, a rebalancing towards greater breadth of learning and skills development and more diverse learner pathways has become important for 21st century life. However, breadth should not entail studying more subjects but should focus on exploring the connections between subjects through interdisciplinary and cross-curricular learning (IDL) - one of the ‘four contexts for learning’ of Curriculum for Excellence and a key element of the Scottish Diploma of Achievement proposed in the Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment (2023). Knowing how to learn, and motivating learners to want to learn, are becoming as important as what they learn.

By way of background, in the early 1960s only around 4% of UK school leavers continued their education into university. Higher Education expanded rapidly from late 1960s onwards with the aim of driving innovation, economic growth and greater prosperity. In 2023 Scottish higher education entries were around 37% of school leavers, with around 27% entering further education and 24% into employment. In Scotland, as in the wider UK, a majority of school leavers don’t go on to university. Nonetheless higher education remains the aspiration and destination of choice for many.

In practice, education serves multiple purposes – supporting and growing the economy, developing skills, preparing individuals for employment and (not least) enhancing and enriching their understanding of the world and their role within it. However, many of the jobs for which our education system currently prepares young learners may not exist by the time they enter the workforce. Jobs for life are becoming rarer. Higher education institutions focus more on educating students, creating new insights, knowledge and understanding through research, sharing knowledge and developing subject-specific skills. This creates a tension. While many jobs continue to value more specialist knowledge, understanding and training, a large majority (>86%) of large employers (Institute of Student Employers) now say they no longer require higher education graduates with subject specialisms, while an astonishing 96% of graduates said they had changed career pathways by age 241. Subject specialism is no longer the primary determinant of suitability in the majority of graduate recruitment. Employers increasingly value transferable skills and attributes, breadth of knowledge and experience, adaptability, cross-disciplinary thinking and working, problem-solving, collaboration and interpersonal skills – all skills that can be transferred from one role and place to another, and across employment sectors. These should be an integral part of all young people’s education, ensuring the democratisation of knowledge and skills. This is not to suggest that subject specialism through secondary education and qualifications is no longer important; sustaining subject specialism, research, skills and expertise should remain central to education and to prosperous modern economies.

Meanwhile the stability and financial viability of higher education institutions in the UK (and more widely) are currently under serious threat, particularly because of the large and widespread loss of income resulting from the recent rapid decline in the numbers of overseas students studying in the UK. The college sector, which plays a vital role in skilling and upskilling learners to address skills demands, gaps and shortages (not least in key energy, construction and environmental sectors) is also under threat from critical underfunding2. All of these challenges are systemic. The status quo appears unsustainable. Reform of secondary education and the qualifications should address the better alignment of secondary and tertiary education to meet the rapidly evolving and diverse challenges of the 21st century. This will require cross-sector collaboration to develop more flexible learner pathways through the education system.

The UK’s newest university, the London Interdisciplinary School, has led the way in developing a problem-led curriculum, ‘teaching undergraduates, graduates, and professionals how to tackle complex, real-world problems by applying knowledge and skills from a range of disciplines, and embracing science, humanities, and the arts’. The recently established Edinburgh Futures Institute shares these aspirations. Other universities are now developing broadly interdisciplinary curricula or requiring a proportion of their undergraduate teaching to take the form of interdisciplinary modules to broaden the mindsets of students entering higher education.

“Collaboration” was the leading ‘word cloud’ word selected by delegates (including many classroom teachers) at the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s 2019 IDL Conference; it is to be expected in most jobs. Yet most of our secondary education and tertiary education and qualifications (our learner pathways) prioritise individual achievements. Collaboration requires a major culture shift, not least in testing and qualifications and in learner mindsets.

Are young learners over-assessed and losing a sense of imagination and curiosity about the world? In the most-viewed Ted Talk of all time (“Changing Education Paradigms”) Sir Ken Robinson thought so. The systemic development of more interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to learning would make a major contribution to the development of curious and ‘job-ready’ students and graduates.

Colin Graham (FRSE) is a Senior Honorary Professorial Fellow, The University of Edinburgh

This post has been adapted from an article in the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s quarterly magazine ReSourcE for Spring 20243, which contains a series of articles written by members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Education Committee.

The image was AI-generated by WriteCream’s free implementation using the prompt “A modern teenaged schoolchild wearing a 2025 school uniform sitting at the wheel of a 1920s racing car on an Edinburgh street with a race setting. The scene should blend contemporary and historical elements.”

Background

Over the last half century Finland’s economy has transformed from agriculture, forestry, mineral extraction and heavy industry towards technology-driven knowledge industries, accompanied by rapid urbanisation (85% urban by 2018). Innovation is both a national value and an economic practice (e.g. Nokia electronics and telecommunications), and research and development spending is a high percentage of GDP. Finland is near the top of World Economic Forum rankings for global competitiveness and preparedness for change, with extensive welfare systems. In 2024 Finland topped the United Nation’s World Happiness ranking for the seventh time in a row.

In the 1970’s a comprehensive Finnish education system was created with the mission of equal educational opportunities for all. Power and responsibility were delegated to teachers, schools and municipalities within which they are located. In the noughties Finland’s education system became the highest performing amongst OECD countries. Equity is a strong theme in Finnish society, within which teaching is one of the most highly respected professions. As a result, competition to join highly regarded teacher education and training masters courses has been fierce. External, national-standardised high-stakes assessment takes place only at matriculation (age 18), prior to which pupil assessment is largely devised and implemented by teachers. Despite a recent decline in PISA scores currently being researched (6th in reading and 16th in maths in 2018), thought to relate to wider challenges of learning the Finnish language amongst the growing immigrant population, Finland remains ranked as a leading OECD country. Government retains a focus on teacher development and innovation to achieve improvements.

Finland: Educating the Whole Child: AQi.org.uk. October 3, 2021

What is Yrityskylä?

Yrityskylä is an innovative Finnish learning module undertaken by level 6 pupils (age~12-13) and again three years later at level 9, in which they learn about working life – finances, entrepreneurship and how society functions. A literal translation of Yrityskylä is ‘business village’. These are the first early steps for young learners towards their future working lives and their growth as contributing members of society. It comprises ten sessions held at school leading to the highlight of an exciting day in the workplace. During this module, sixth graders learn about how Finnish society functions, get to practice voting, learn basic concepts of the economy and practice their own use of money. They create their own job applications, practice preparing for a job interview and work for a day in their own chosen profession as employees of real companies or other employers. They receive a salary for their work, which is also used for paying taxes. For the day, they also get a bank card onto which they are paid in credit to spend at the student-led café, to practice responsible spending in a miniature society. Yrityskylä Day is usually an eagerly awaited highlight of the school year.

Entrepreneurship is part of the curriculum for basic education aimed at giving young people skills they can use later in their lives, learning by doing and trying things by and for themselves. They learn to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, and their own paths in society. Yritytskylä strengthens young people’s economic skills and develops their future working life and day-to-day skills. Positive working-life experiences reinforce self-esteem and reduce fears of working life. This is particularly important at a time when a recent report1 has shown that only 53% of Finnish young people are enthusiastic about entering the labour market, down from 82% in 2018.

Professor Colin Graham discussed Yrityskylä as experienced early in 2024 by a 6th grade pupil, Elin (now age 13). Elin is a pupil at the Finnish International School of Tampere, where most teaching is in English, but which in all other respects is the same as any other in the Finnish state school system. Elin previously attended a state primary school in London.

Colin: Hello, Elin, and thank you for talking to us today about Yrityskylä. To begin with, what was the most interesting topic of the preparatory sessions?

Elin: For me, the most interesting topic was when we chose different public services and businesses from our own society; also adding up all the expenses per year.

Colin: So which professions or jobs did you apply for?

Elin: We had to choose three jobs that we were interested in. I chose Martela, which is a company that designs offices. There was also Art Lab, which is a company where you can look at art through VR goggles. The third one was Kylä Cafe, which is a real food café.

Colin: What work tasks did you actually do?

Elin: On the lead up to Yrityskylä day, we learnt about spending money, conducting interviews and working in different professions and businesses. We had to keep track of the timetable. We sold things like chairs. People came into our office to ask to us to design an office with requests such as including a different colour scheme and furniture needs.

Colin: What did you learn about spending and saving money?

Elin: We learned about how businesses make a profit by subtracting expenses from income. We used an example of an ice cream kiosk which has employees, rents space and buys raw materials. We learnt that all businesses have to pay taxes for the use of public services. We had to build our own society on a map, using stickers to show the shops and public services; then we had to work out where tax revenue was coming from and if that money would be enough to pay for the public services. This project created a picture of our own Yrityskylä. We also learned about saving money after we've earned it, so that there's enough for the future and for paying family expenses such as food and goods.

Colin: What did you find challenging about Yrityskylä?

Elin: We learned about running a business by playing an ice cream game in which you would roll the dice to see how the weather would affect the profit. But it was quite confusing and took a while to understand. When I played Monopoly with my family, I realised and understood more about how tax works. A simpler game during Yrityskylä might have helped us to more quickly understand the new ideas, like how tax and businesses work, ways of saving money and concepts like expenses.

Colin: Did you undertake some problem-solving? What problems did you encounter and how did you solve them?

Elin: The hardest problem-solving task was that the timetable was laid out in a way that made it hard for us to manage our time, so we found that by the time we’d finished one project – like selling a chair to a customer – there would be a meeting with other school pupils from different businesses that had already started. We didn’t really manage to solve that one!

Colin: What were the positive outcomes of Yrityskylä? And was it positive overall?

Elin: I was mostly excited about Yrityskylä day itself, where you could experience everything in real life. Yrityskylä took place in Finlayson - a big old factory building from the 1800s in the centre of Tampere2. The space was separated into different cubicles set up to represent all the businesses in our ‘Business Village’. So, in my business, we had a tablet with our timetable on it, and we had to follow it so you would know what things you had to do and at what time they would happen. And so overall it was a lot of fun, and it's something I would definitely want to do again.

Colin: How many students were involved? and how many students worked with each Yrityskylä business?

Elin: Well, the whole Yrityskylä school day involved four classes, so maybe about thirteen in each class. But in each group there were about six pupils, or in some, maybe only three. There were more pupils in the café group.

Colin: This will be of wide interest to learners and teachers in Scotland and beyond. Thank you very much.

You can read more about Yrityskylä at https://nuortennyt.fi/en/yrityskyla/.

Elin (now age 13) is a pupil at the Finnish International School of Tampere, where most teaching is in English. She cycles between home, school and clubs in almost all weather. Her clubs are mostly taught in Finnish and include cello, orchestra, ballet and cross country skiing (or summer ski training). Aside from Yrityskylä, her favourite school subjects include art, home economics, history, biology and crafts where she has made clothes, wood joints and a metal sauna ladle. At home, Elin draws with pencil, watercolour, ink, charcoal, and chocolate.

The 26th UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow is a critically important intergovernmental meeting of world leaders and scientists if irreversible climate change is to be avoided. It is also part of a much greater and broader long-term challenge of mitigating wider environmental degradation world-wide that threatens the sustainability not just of humanity but of all life on Earth. These challenges and related opportunities are all deeply interdisciplinary in nature.

Learning and teaching resources on these and related topics spanning most curriculum areas and many facets of climate, environment and sustainability have been collated from various sources in our recently updated resources page.

Featured Image © UK Met Office, University of Reading #showyourstripes CC-BY-4.0

“The student who can begin in early life to think of things as connected…..has begun the life of learning”. Mark van Doren (poet, writer, critic) 1943.

Interdisciplinary learning (IDL) is a way of thinking and learning in which learners draw on knowledge, understanding and skills from two or more subjects in order to solve a problem or advance our understanding of a concept or idea that extends beyond the scope of any one subject. IDL enables the transfer and application of subject knowledge and language to other areas of learning and to new problems. It is not a substitute for subject-based learning – on the contrary, disciplinary and interdisciplinary learning are complementary and interlinked. IDL cannot exist separately from disciplines but is founded on strong disciplinary knowledge, understanding and skills. It should complement and enrich subject learning, facilitate learning across subject boundaries, and enable students to use their learning beyond the situation in which the learning occurred.

Featured image: Whitelee Wind Farm, nr Glasgow. CC BY-3.0 Author: BJ Mullan

The development of IDL requires breadth of subject knowledge and skills. That is why it is commonly developed collaboratively. The principles and practice of IDL as a way of thinking and learning apply across all areas of learning and teaching, including further and higher education.

IDL is often used (and misused) as a general term for various types of learning that involve the wider use, connection and application of disciplinary knowledge (‘making connections between subjects’), such as (for example) multidisciplinary-, project-based, inquiry-based – or problem-based learning. All have their place. 

Interdisciplinary learning and multidisciplinary learning are often confused. Simply linking discrete subjects with no immediate connection together around a theme is multidisciplinary, not interdisciplinary.

“Conflicting understandings of what IDL is” was recognised by teachers and educators at the RSE IDL conference as one of the major challenges of IDL implementation. This is why a concise working definition of IDL is important in providing a ‘benchmark’ for its development and practice, even although in practice there are many possible creative contexts, starting points and approaches to the development of IDL and some ‘fuzziness’ and latitude around this definition.

A helpful metaphor for IDL is that of pillars, lintels and foundations. IDL should continue to be founded on deep and coherent pillars of subject knowledge, understanding and skills. Interdisciplinary learning will lack rigour and utility if not part of a structure in which the disciplines are the pillars, with the interdisciplinary working as the lintels. Without the disciplinary pillars, the interdisciplinary lintels will fall. The pillars and lintels are supported by foundations – competences, aptitudes, basic knowledge, skills and methods in and across all subjects, including literacy and numeracy.

There is an ever-increasing need for the integration of both specialist and broad knowledge in the modern workplace and in the wider world. Subject-specific knowledge is no longer the primary determinant of suitability in most graduate recruitment. However, IDL is not just about equipping students with more useful skills for the workplace; it is more broadly about providing students with experiences that foster a lifelong love for learning, creativity and community.

Click here to access the RSE IDL Conference Introduction paper (2019).

Click here to read more about disciplines.

The IDL Network is one of several outcomes of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s (RSE) 2019 conference on “Interdisciplinary Learning: Creative Thinking for a Complex World”. At the conference, a questionnaire was circulated to around 160 delegates, respondents to which (practitioners, school leaders and teacher educators) supported the establishment of a teacher forum, which the RSE has co-ordinated.

An overarching challenge to the implementation of IDL is the lack of a common understanding and clarity about what constitutes IDL. Improving our understanding of IDL and related approaches to connecting subject learning by various means within the education community is therefore a priority. The Network has been established as a website with the aim of forming and building a broad community of practice around IDL.

Featured image: Queensferry Crossing. CC BY-2.0. Author: Tony Hisgett.

Why is IDL Important?

The 21st Century world has proved to be an increasingly unpredictable place. Its global challenges are all complex. They can’t be properly understood within any one discipline or curriculum area, but require interdisciplinary thinking and working across the curriculum. These challenges include globalisation (of manufacture, technologies, goods and their supply chains, information flow and ideas), pandemic diseases, food and water, biodiversity, energy, climate change, environmental degradation, demographic change and more. All of these challenges have consequences for health, environment, employment, economic development and inequalities of income, resource and opportunity.

The ‘interconnectedness’ of the above challenges both to each other and to the many areas of knowledge and understanding (the disciplines) that underpin them is now clear. The long-term impacts will be particularly acute for those currently in our education systems. How do we prepare learners to thrive in this increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world?

The need for our education system to produce creative and curious learners, problem-solvers, collaborators and critical thinkers with rich experiences of both interdisciplinary and subject learning as a natural way of learning, thinking and working is clear and urgent. Problems and challenges of this magnitude can only be tackled and resolved through learning that draws on knowledge and understanding from more than one discipline. They require the capacity to recontextualise disciplinary knowledge when it is transferred from one discipline and applied to another in order to resolve problems, gain new insights and improve outcomes. A greater ethos of collaboration in learning and teaching will be a required.

Click here to read more about work, learning and community

When talking about IDL and its development, it’s helpful to remind ourselves what disciplines and school subjects are and why they are important in IDL. A discipline is a branch of learning or domain of knowledge that is characterised by distinct objects, concepts, principles, theories, skills, tools and applications. Established disciplines in schools, colleges, higher education and research institutions alike comprise groupings of ‘like-minded’ people with a shared language. Their boundaries are not always well defined. Disciplines give structure and rigour to the development of knowledge, and provide a reservoir of knowledge and skills that contribute economic, cultural and social value to the well being of society (RSE, Pillars and Lintels, 2017).

Discipline boundaries evolve with time as new disciplinary knowledge accrues. However, major new insights and understandings – and solutions to real-world problems – frequently emerge in the gaps between disciplinary boundaries – the interdisciplinary areas. 

Disciplines and school subjects are often conflated. In contrast to disciplines, school subjects are not ends in themselves but are a way of apportioning curriculum content from within and across an increasingly wide body of knowledge (Priestley, 2019). As a broad body of knowledge, the curriculum should embrace both subject knowledge and interdisciplinary knowledge (IDL) in a coherent way.

Featured image: Fruit bowl © Nick Hood 2020