Mother tongue instruction

The City of Helsinki offers studies for maintaining the pupil’s mother tongue, home language or language skills obtained abroad. The language studies are organised according to the number of pupils enrolled in these studies. The language studies complement the comprehensive education, and the pupil will receive a separate verbal assessment for these studies.  

The studies are available to:

• multilingual pupils whose mother tongue is not Finnish or Swedish
• pupils whose family speaks Romani
• pupils whose family speaks Sami
• pupils returning to Finland from another country in which they have studied a foreign language.

Participation in the mother tongue studies is optional; however, once the pupil has enrolled in the studies, they are required to attend the lessons regularly.

Studies can be offered at the pupil’s own school, or they may have to take the lessons at another school. Information on the schedules of the lessons can be requested from the pupil’s school. The pupil will enrol in mother tongue studies when they enrol in school or in the 7th grade. Enrolment at other times is also possible. In this case, a separate form is used. The forms are available at schools or on the Forms webpage of the Education Division’s website.

Mother tongue studies are only offered to pupils at schools operated by the City (the Education Committee’s Decision item 258, 16 October 2007).

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27.10.2020 13:19