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Early education and care

Early education and care is offered in municipal or private daycare, in family daycare or in playgroup club activities. Parents should apply for daycare four months prior to the need for care.

Early education and care is offered in municipal or private daycare, in family daycare or in playgroup club activities. Parents should apply for daycare four months prior to the need for care.

Education Division is responsible for Finnish- and Swedis-language daycare and preschool education.

Apply for early childhood education on Asti online service

Guardians can apply for a place for their child in municipal early childhood education and pre-primary education on the Asti online service.

Places in club activities are applied for on the City of Helsinki E-services.

How the process works

The application form includes instructions on how to fill in the form. Missing or incorrect information is marked in red on each page.  

The application form lets you move forward once all required fields are filled in. You can save the application as a draft and edit it later. The draft will be deleted when you submit the application. After submitting the application, you can edit it until it will be locked three months before the need for the service, or sooner if your case is urgent. 

The submitted application is saved in the Asti online service. The service will notify you if it is sent successfully. You can monitor the application status in the system. The status of a submitted application that is awaiting processing is Submitted. Submitted applications can be edited until the application is locked. When the processing of the application starts, the status of the application changes to In Process. 

An official decision is always made regarding an application for early childhood starting from the start date of the service and, where possible, from the options proposed by the family. 

The decision on the early childhood education place can be viewed electronically by the child's guardians on Asti.

You can delete your application before a decision is made. The status of a deleted application is Deleted. It is then removed from the system.  

If you wish to make changes to the application during the processing time, please call the Service guidance for early childhood education.

Processing time

The processing time of an application is up to 4 months, unless you indicate a later start date for the service. Applications are taken into processing about 2 months before the desired start date.

Validity period

The application is valid for 12 months from the date it was submitted.

Note the fee decision folder.

Decisions on fees are delivered to another online service folder of City of Helsinki at asiointi.hel.fi to the guardian who submitted the application. They are delivered to a different system than the early childhood education decision, and you should check for the client fee decisions there.   

Additional information

An application for early childhood education can be submitted 12 months before the desired start date. 

People living outside Helsinki can also apply for an early childhood education place, on the condition that the family must officially live in Helsinki by the beginning of the early childhood education. 

Links

Use the online service

Fill in an application on Asti

Service available every day around the clock
Requires authentication.