City of Vantaa annoyed at request for report relating to "fish finger episode"

Chancellor of Justice wants report on pupil support and welfare in city's comprehensive schools

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The City of Vantaa is annoyed at the Ministry of Education and the Chancellor of Justice relating to certain problems experienced at one of Vantaa’s comprehensive schools.
      Chancellor of Justice Jaakko Jonkka has requested a report from the Ministry of Education on whether the pupil support and welfare in Vantaa’s comprehensive schools are adequate and whether their studying conditions are safe.
      Jonkka’s request was sparked by some late-edition tabloid articles on the "fish finger episode" in January, claiming that the food debate revealed the "schools hell" in Vantaa.
     
The City of Vantaa regards the request for a report as groundless. Deputy Mayor Elina Lehto-Häggroth states that it is not forbidden to discuss the city’s problems aloud, but it is regrettable that a time-consuming report is requested for insufficient reasons.
      Lehto-Häggroth is surprised at how an article in a tabloid craving for sensation has managed to persuade the Chancellor of Justice himself to walk into the trap. The article to which Jonkka refers contains an interview of a male teacher reporting on problems at the Vantaankoski school.
      ”The teacher in question has been working at our school for four days. In addition, he is involved in a litigation dispute against the City of Vantaa”, the deputy mayor notes.
      ”The Chancellor of Justice might have also noticed that the city was not much cited in the article”, she adds.
     
However, Jonkka argues that the question is not about the fish fingers or the teacher’s report alone. The episode just provided the sitmulus for the process.
      ”The aim is not to blame Vantaa for anything. The purpose is to conduct a nationwide survey on the current situation relating to pupil welfare”, Jonkka says.
      Helsingin Sanomat did not manage to reach anybody at the Ministry of Education in order to ask whether a similar request for a report has been sent to other Finnish municipalities.
      According to Jonkka, such a survey would have been conducted at some point regardless of the Vantaa episodes.
      ”I had been contemplating the issue of pupil support and welfare already for a long time”, Jonkka observes.
      However, the Chancellor of Justice is unwilling to comment on whether the one-sided articles published in the late-edition tabloid are a sufficient reason to launch such a time-consuming survey.
     
Vantaa denies that its school problems are different from those in other schools.
      ”Some grievances always exist, but by no means does the present situation justify these kinds of measures. This is bound to label all schools in the city”, the deputy mayor regrets.
      However, during the current term problems have piled up at the Vantaankoski school.
      ”Sometimes pupils just are more challenging. We are aware of that and more resources have been allocated to the school”, Lehto-Häggroth reports.
     
In fact, investments in measures to weed out troublemakers among pupils have been successful, says Jari Koponen, a special class teacher at the Vantaankoski school.
      The factors underlying the present situation include an episode that started from the size of one pupil’s food portion at a school lunch as well as another episode involving a schoolboy who was seen with a ”handgun”, which later turned out to be a cigarette lighter, in the school premises. In both cases, the school staff became so overheated that help from the police was needed to calm things down.
      Reportedly, the same Vantaankoski school has experienced problematic situations in the course of the entire school year. The number of troublemaking pupils has been around 10 to 12, mainly aged 13 to 14 years.
     
The city has tried to solve the problems by increasing the number of teachers, by offering support for the working community, and by investing in pupil welfare.
      The Vantaankoski school is a comprehensive school with a total of 600 pupils.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Vantaa fish finger episode causes lively debate (15.1.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat