We want to offer all children and young people equal opportunities to study languages and encourage them to make more varied choices in choosing a language to learn. We want to ensure that across the city districts people have a comprehensive and balanced selection of languages to choose from.
The language teaching strategy will apply to all levels of education and form a coherent whole, ranging from early childhood education through pre-primary and comprehensive education to upper secondary education, as well as liberal adult education. The measures planned in the language teaching strategy will affect pre-primary and comprehensive education.
The proposed changes would come into effect in stages from the start of the 2027–2028 school year.
What would change?
Finnish-language pre-primary education
We want to ensure that more people choose a language other than English as their A1 language, i.e. their first foreign language. We will continue to organise language taster sessions on a regular basis so that children can become familiar with the range of languages offered at their local schools. We will communicate with parents and guardians about the importance of language learning and language choices, for example through joint information sessions.
Finnish-language comprehensive education
For the A1 language, i.e. the first foreign language, we intend to start following the national minimum number of lesson hours, under which students in grades 1 and 2 would have one weekly lesson per school year in the A1 language. At present, they have two lessons per week, one of which has been an extra lesson provided by the city. In the future, the city would still provide extra lessons, but they would be allocated to optional language classes in grades 8 and 9.
We propose that the size of starting language groups be standardised so that all schools have a minimum of 15 students in each group. This also applies to groups starting bilingual education, except for Finnish–North Sami education. Joint teaching arrangements between local schools ensure that a wide range of language options is available. We will also ensure that A2 English groups, can be formed for third graders even with smaller group sizes. We propose changing the criteria for student admission to bilingual Finnish–English and Finnish–Spanish teaching into a two-stage process.
Swedish-language comprehensive education
We propose that the size of starting language groups be standardised so that all schools have a minimum of 15 students in each group. Currently the minimum group size is between 13 and 15.
The city is also exploring the possibility of offering bilingual comprehensive education in Swedish and English in the future. This would mean that part of the teaching would be in Swedish and part in English. The aim is to expand Swedish-language education in Helsinki and give students the chance to develop their skills in both languages.
At this stage, we are asking for feedback from student associations and school boards regarding the suggested changes.
Finnish language Teams session for parents and guardians on Thursday 17 September at 17.30
We are streaming an information session, where we will provide further details on the language teaching strategy, its objectives and proposed measures. The event will be held in Finnish.
Please note! This event will focus on language teaching in Finnish-language pre-primary and comprehensive education. Proposed changes affecting Swedish-language schools will be communicated separately.
A link to the event has been shared with parents and guardians via Wilma in comprehensive education and via Edlevo in early childhood education.
During the session, you will have the opportunity to share their views on the objectives of the language strategy and the proposed measures. There will be a recording of the event, which will be available to watch on the Helsinki Channel approximately two weeks after the event.
Next steps for the language teaching strategy
The Finnish and Swedish sub-committees of the Education Committee will discuss the language strategy in autumn 2026 and decide on the following aspects:
- A1 and A2 language teaching implementation / distribution of lesson hours
- the size of starting language groups
- admission to bilingual education.
Following the sub-committees’ deliberations, we will launch a review of the schools’ language programmes in line with the strategy.