I just finished the article, and saw a reference there to a New Zealand study about Rudolf Steiner schools. I attended the same Steiner school as the author of the study, and I would consider several people from my class to be functionally illiterate. This mostly comes down to the quality of the school rather than the philosophy - when I joined it was very new and run by a bunch of well-meaning hippies who had basically no idea about education.
If you're going to have a child-led education system where you assume that if the child isn't reading it's because they're not ready yet, you better be damn sure you're not missing the signs of something more serious, because if you do, when you come to address it it will be much more difficult the later you intervene. It sounds like the teachers in Finland are probably good enough to catch this - ours were not.
Well, here the kindergarten with child-led play isn't that much part of the education system. Even the pre-school year is fundamentally just preparing kids for the school, which is still very much teacher-led.
The written Finnish being very easy to spell and read also probably contributes. There are only very few peculiarities that differentiate from the logical 1-1 mapping between letter symbols and vocal sounds. Practically all children all able to attain at least the basic functional literacy skills in a couple of years. (I really couldn't understand the concept of spelling bee competitions in US TV shows, like that one Peanuts animated film, until we started English.)
If you're going to have a child-led education system where you assume that if the child isn't reading it's because they're not ready yet, you better be damn sure you're not missing the signs of something more serious, because if you do, when you come to address it it will be much more difficult the later you intervene. It sounds like the teachers in Finland are probably good enough to catch this - ours were not.