Education is one of the key values in the modern society. In recent years the Pisa results have been in the centre of many discussions. One question that has been frequently raised is: why the Finnish students have, year after year, excellent results. In this article we try to look behind these results. First, we introduce a reader to the changes that have taken place in Finnish education system during the last 50 years, and to the modern steering system of Finnish education. Second, we describe the changes in teacher education and the common components of Finnish teacher education programs. Third, we discuss the importance of teacher ethics. In addition, we try to answer the question: what kind of competence teachers need in 2020 in order to maintain the good quality of education. It is obvious that we live in a rapidly changing world, and for this reason we have to look into the future in order to be ready to meet the new challenges when they occur.