Congratulations to Smallsteps on the milestone! How would you compare schools in Finland today to what you attended presumably in Australia as a wee lad? Here in my region, there are the typical government schools, specialized charter academies, private schools religious or otherwise, and a lot of homeschoolers who use the library system, so there isn't exactly one option, even if the government schools dominate. And I know "our" model is not a global standard, even though there are some similarities.
They have electricity! ;)
Actually, probably similar to when I was young, but Australia has degraded since. It is a chicken and egg issue though, as students have degraded heavily also. Finland tends to do a good job of helping kids take more responsibility, which is probably partly due to all the different conditions they face with weather. Also, safety is high here, so many kids walk to school from the first grade.
Home schooling doesn't happen here much or at all asfaik.
There are "private" schools, but not like they are in the Aus or the UK for example, they are more for other purposes, like for language. For instance, there are a couple English language schools in the city so that kids coming from other countries or kids with non-native parents have a place to go. They are pretty much the same as the public schools.
In general, there is very low differentiation between schools and even through universities in Finland. The goal has been to improve the average levels of the population since the end of WW2, when it went from a farming to an industrialized country, moving into IT and knowledge work in the last 40 years.
In Australia, there are differences between schools and the private ones dominate the grades, but it doesn't have as much affect (it didn't at least) on opportunities later, compared to what I hear from the US. I went to public schools and my high school at the time had the number one school orchestra in the country. Which might be a surprise to some.
My "fear" for Finland is that they too closely follow the changing global culture as if that is a good thing, and as a result, the school system is degrading.