The good life of Helsinki residents is founded on a smooth everyday existence and functional services. People’s situations in life vary. The significance of different services and phenomena changes at different stages of our lives. Each of the city’s divisions has an important role to play in ensuring that Helsinki runs smoothly and provides residents with the conditions for a good life.
Helsinki offers quality services to its residents. Special attention is devoted to strengthening comprehensive education and ensuring easy access to healthcare.
We will ensure that every local school in Helsinki is a good, quality school. We will offer every student a first-rate, well-rounded education, in addition to the support they need. Our school premises will facilitate learning, and all schools will be able to provide printed study materials to the students. We will successfully carry out the government reform of support for learning. In addition to Helsinki’s local public schools, there are several private and state-owned schools in the city. Some of these schools are a part of the city’s service network. We monitor the operational conditions of these schools as well as their projects to upgrade their premises.
Every young person graduating from a school in Helsinki should have reading, writing and arithmetic skills and a sufficient command of general knowledge to manage in continued education and working life. The calculated class size in primary education will be reduced from 20 students to 18. We will expand basic education with two more hours of studies per week in the language of instruction and the reading of literature during the school day. We will enlist the help of libraries and maternity and child health clinics in our goal to make Helsinki a literacy capital. We will create faith in the future and inspire the will to succeed. We will ensure the comprehensive reach of our network of local libraries. Especially in those areas of the city where it has not been as widely available, we will expand our offering of weighted-curriculum options, which emphasise a certain subject or subject area. We will also make sure that every family is informed of the weighted-curriculum options available to them. We are drawing up a language strategy that will define the future of language instruction in Helsinki.
We will ensure that vocational education and training has sufficient in-person instruction, study support and general knowledge instruction for students in compulsory education. We will anticipate the growth in demand for study places in general upper secondary schools and make sure that there are enough available.
We will ensure that our principle of providing every child with a place at a local Finnish-speaking daycare centre is applied year-round. In line with this same principle, we are evaluating methods by which we could provide a local daycare centre place to children who speak Swedish as their first language as well. New daycare centres are designed with the children’s needs in mind to feel cosy and safe, with sufficient indoor space and multifaceted outdoor spaces that contain green areas. Daycare centres of various sizes are needed in Helsinki, so it is not necessary for all new daycare centre construction projects to build large facilities.
Collaboration will be intensified between the city’s Education Division and Urban Environment Division in the planning and design of local schools and daycare centres, and there will be increased student and staff participation in the planning and design of the indoor and outdoor spaces.
Access to primary healthcare and the continuity of care will be improved. A 14-day target will be set, within which people should be able to gain access to a doctor or nurse. We will eliminate backlogs, especially in areas with long queues for treatment, and ensure that people can always access care when they need it. We will introduce a personal doctor model, in which everyone who needs substantial healthcare, such as people with long-term illnesses, as well as others who wish to use this option, will be assigned a designated personal doctor. We will also implement an experiment in which medical trainees can also serve as designated personal doctors. Customer-friendly and convenient digital services will be taken into use in health services. We will build a new Health and Wellbeing Centre in the district of Malmi. The rest of our primary healthcare services will be improved with developments to the existing service network.
Cooperation and care chains between primary healthcare and specialised medicine will be intensified.
We will promote a shift in the focus of care towards primary healthcare. At the same time, funding should be allocated in an appropriate manner to preserve the operating conditions for top-level specialised medicine, research and training at the HUS network of university hospitals in Helsinki. We are also developing our Swedish-language social and health services and strive to provide quality, seamless services in Swedish as well.
A core component of a smoothly functioning everyday life is trouble-free transportation and mobility. We will ensure that it is convenient and easy to get around Helsinki on foot and when using various modes of transport. Different modes of transport each have a place at different times in a person’s everyday existence. When planning the city and its transport system, we align our plans with the different mobility needs of our residents.
The goal is for increasing numbers of Helsinki residents to choose public transport as their mode of transportation. The rise in public transport ticket prices will be curbed and we will work during this strategy period towards achieving a resident reduction in real ticket prices from 2026 levels. We will make sure that the ticket system develops in a direction that is encouraging for our residents. We will also ensure smoothly functioning public transport connections during large-scale construction and renovation projects.
Citywide conditions for pedestrians will be developed so they are pleasant and safe throughout the year. We are mindful of the accessibility of our city spaces.
Over the last ten years, cycling conditions in Helsinki have significantly improved. We will continue to systematically develop Helsinki’s cycling conditions and network of cycle paths. The use of motor vehicles also has a place as a mode of transport for city residents. As the city infrastructure develops, we will ensure that the conditions for using motor vehicles are not substantially weakened.
Large cities are being built and repaired continuously. The inconvenience caused by work sites should be kept to a minimum. Construction and renovation projects that are disruptive to mobility will be broken up into phases. More solutions for speeding up the progress of road works and repairs will be put into use, and effective and measurable incentives will be added to project contracts to encourage more functional traffic arrangements and lead times at construction sites. We will minimize work site inconvenience to our residents and provide smooth and safe pedestrian routes near work site areas. We will use the temporary urban environments created by maintenance or work sites to promote art and culture.