This passionate commitment to the legacy of the family business itself has led me not only to reflect but also to delve into this topic by studying families that have managed to make their businesses and legacies endure for more than two hundred years, finding that the factor of education is much more critical than we imagine.

Since some countries in Latin America and, especially Colombia, decided to take a significant step and participate in the famous PISA reports or evaluations, it has become evident that one of the main gaps keeping the continent below the level of other countries is education. It appears on the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) page as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which aims to assess to what extent students close to the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills necessary for full participation in the knowledge society.

These specific evaluations, predominantly quantitative rather than qualitative in assessing students' skills, can have a tremendous effect on continuity and even the creation of new businesses, whether they are family or non-family, especially in critical moments where our main challenge as a country is to eliminate or narrow the social gaps that are so wide in Colombia, such as political inclusion, prosperity, and peace.

PISA highlights those countries that have achieved good performance and, at the same time, an equitable distribution of learning opportunities, thus helping to set ambitious goals for other countries. They examine the performance of 15-year-old students in key subject areas and also study a wide range of educational outcomes, including students' motivation to learn, their self-conception, and their learning strategies.

PISA assessments are conducted every three years, with each of the last three assessments focusing on a specific subject area such as reading in 2000, mathematics in 2003, and science in 2006, with problem-solving being a special subject area in PISA 2003. The program is conducting a second phase of assessments in 2009 in reading, in 2012 in mathematics, and in 2015 in science.

La participación en PISA ha sido extensa, incluyendo hasta la fecha todos los países miembros de la OCDE así como varios países asociados. Los estudiantes son seleccionados a partir de una muestra aleatoria de escuelas públicas y privadas, que son elegidos en función de su edad (entre los 15 años y tres meses – 16 años y dos meses al principio de la evaluación) y no del grado escolar en el que se encuentran. Más de un millón de alumnos han sido evaluados hasta la fecha.

In addition to paper and pencil tests measuring competence in reading, mathematics, and science, students fill out questionnaires about themselves, while their directors provide information about their schools. A particular data point that caught my attention is that the country that consistently achieves better results is Finland. Why do Finns have better education? What can Colombians learn from them? It is true that public spending on education relative to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is higher in Finland (6.51%) than the European average (5.21%). However, other countries with a higher budget, such as Denmark (8.28%) and Sweden (7.47%), do not achieve the same results. On the other hand, spending per student at this level is much lower compared to some countries like Luxembourg, the United States, or Italy, which rank lower in the PISA assessments. Therefore, the key is not solely a monetary issue.

The report from the same PISA assessment provides clues about the factors leading to certain conclusions, such as those indicating that countries with a higher degree of autonomy in their educational centers and greater equity among their schools achieve better results, and Finland ranks high in these two variables.

However, the hypothesis gaining more weight is the one pointed out by educational experts to explain the excellent and consistent performance of Finnish students, which is the high degree of training of primary and secondary education teachers. This training promotes the development of quality citizens and, consequently, quality entrepreneurs with a strategic vision for the future. Therefore, their teachers must also be of high quality.

I must emphasize that quality educational systems result from the combination of three interrelated factors: family, sociocultural, and school. In Finland, these factors are coordinated and reinforced, resulting in the high academic achievements of its students.

Finland is a small country with a democratic society that stands out for its high levels of equity and social equality, largely due to the strong economic benefits and official assistance offered by the state to families. Considering that, in various PISA assessments, the most determining factor correlating with student performance in all countries is the socioeconomic and cultural level of families, we then have one of the keys to the success of Finnish students. In this Nordic country, not only is the score variation in PISA minimal based on socioeconomic levels, but even those obtaining the worst results by this variable are above the economic average.

On the other hand, the learning environment provided by homes and families in Finland is the starting point for students' preparation. This situation is very similar concerning the training of long-lived family businesses, making this particular topic of great importance with a focus on the family business fabric of the region, and in some specific cases, not only for family members but also for the children of organization workers.

A significant fact is that almost 60% of families consider themselves primarily responsible for their children's education, actively participating in it thanks to work-family reconciliation measures in this country. This differs from Latin American countries where it is easier to blame the government or schools for poor results.

This data, supported by the high level of higher education among adults (aged 24-64), which stands at 34% of the population, creates a more conducive family environment for students to achieve good academic results. Adding to this the cultural support provided by the state through an extensive network of almost 2,000 public libraries for a population of not more than six million; the direct promotion of reading and languages provided by television as an explicit strategy where foreign programs or movies are not translated; the high popular reading rate in almost 90% of the population and the dissemination of the press (the highest in Europe), results in the ideal sociocultural landscape to support the local education system.