91Â鶹¹ú²ú¾«Æ·×ÔÅÄ

Preschool and Basic Education

Some Ukrainian refugee children have already joined day-care groups and schools. Social services are ready to offer psychological help, and sports clubs have shown willingness to open doors without charge. The Ministry of Education and Culture highlights the importance of minimizing learning interruption of children who have fled Ukraine. Preparatory classes are being organized and their main goal is to provide students with necessary skills in Finnish or Swedish and other skills to transition to pre-school or basic education, and to promote the students’ balanced development and integration into Finnish society.

There is no national lesson or curriculum defined for preparatory education, so an individualized programme is prepared for students according to their learning goals. A coordinator will be appointed to arrange cooperation between the educators and other services such as school health care and psychological services.

In municipalities that have not previously provided education for students with an immigrant background, the Ministry recommends the initiation of preparatory education with regional and intermunicipal cooperation.

Secondary education

Ukrainian children are free to apply for the preparation for upper secondary education (LUVA) for immigrants and foreign speakers. Starting in August, the LUVA education will be combined with a new preparatory education program (TUVA).

Vocational education

Ukrainian refugees are free to apply to vocational education and are allowed to work, thus able to complete their studies through a training or apprenticeship contract.

Municipalities will survey whether there are Ukrainian teachers or pedagogical trained personnel that are interested in working in schools as school counselors or teacher assistants.

There are no official qualification requirements for teachers in preparatory classes, these will be decided by the organizers of those classes, based on minimum language requirements.

The Finnish National Agency for Education has put together materials and trainings to support bilingual preparatory teaching, inclusive preparatory education, strengthening language skills in pre-primary and primary education and guidelines on integrated learning path for multilingual children. It also provides an extensive collection of additional supportive materials such as textbooks in Ukrainian, how to teach Ukrainian as a second language, Ukrainian learning materials on digital platforms, how to connect to the distance teaching by the Ukrainian Ministry of Education, children’s books in Ukrainian.

In addition, authorities will arrange for interpretation and translation when supporting official relations with immigrants without knowledge of Finnish or Swedish. The state fully reimburses those interpretation costs linked to integration procedures, including when used to foster co-operation between the home and the school.

Municipalities are entitled to compensation paid by the state for organizing integration services in accordance with the Integration Act. Compensation is divided into deferred compensation and compensation based on actual costs. Compensation is paid to the municipality by the Development and Administration Center (KEHA Center). Integration services include education of Ukrainian refugees.

For 2022, preparatory classes will be funded by the 2022 budget to municipalities, retrospectively and based on the months of attendance of pupils. For 2023, the education provider will be able to apply for state contribution funding to preparatory education. There will also be funding for supplementary education provided by the government, according to the criteria for state support for supplementary education for foreign-speaking, Sámi-speaking and Roma-speaking pupils in basic and upper secondary education (1777/2009). The state subsidy is a maximum of 86% of the imputed costs determined by the regulation. The grant is granted annually by the National Board of Education upon application.

Funding is also available to support a special curriculum teaching Finnish/Swedish as a second language and literature (S2) as well as for teaching in a pupil’s own mother tongue. For the latter, a minimum of four Ukrainian speaking students would have to be gathered.

In higher education, the Government will cover expenses of about 2,000 Ukrainian university students interested in continuing their studies in Finland. Students at the University of Eastern Finland could also apply for grants from a €100,000 fund and transportation has been made free for Ukraine passport holders.