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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 who speak Romani or have Romani-speaking family members
  • pupils who speak Sami or have Sami-speaking family members
  • pupils returning to Finland from another country, and who have learned a foreign language abroad.

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

Studies can take place at the pupil’s own school, or they might take place at another school. Ask for more information on the schedules from your own school. You can enrol a pupil in mother tongue studies at any time by submitting the form below to the pupil's own school. When enrolling to grades 1 or 7, you can usually sign up as part of the electronic enrolment process.  Download the PDF enrolment form here: Enrolment form for instruction in mother tongue, home language or foreign language acquired abroad

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



 10.09.2021 10:41