Finnish language teaching for foreigners in Helsinki found to be inadequaate

Long queues for beginners’ courses

print this

The availability of Finnish language teaching for adult immigrants in Helsinki is woefully inadequate compared with demand.
     Applications for beginners’ courses far outstrip the amount of space available in the courses. The Uusimaa Employment and Economic Development Centre says that immigrants applying for language courses have to wait as long as six months to get in.
     For instance, Amiedu, which arranges courses for immigrants, says that there were more than 300 applicants for its beginners’ course in Finnish this autumn. The course can accommodate only 54 participants.
     “The Helsinki region is quite a unique area, because there are so many immigrants here. We would need much more teaching”, says Päivi Leppänen, head of immigrants’ integration education at Amiedu.
     The inadequacy of available education and the growth in the number of applicants have been noticed in other educational institutions as well.
     “The question is naturally one of resources. The number of immigrants is growing faster than the availability of teaching”, says Pirkko Majakangas, head teacher of the Helsinki Upper Secondary School for Adults.
     
From early 2007 the Immigrant Services Unit of the Helsinki Employment Office has received between 65 and 80 applications each month from immigrants who are unemployed, or who live on income supplements, who have lived in Finland for less than three years, and who want to take part in integration training.
     Under the law, a personal integration plan must be drawn up for each of them within two months, and only after that is it possible to apply for language teaching. In addition to those taking part in the integration programme, the number of other types of immigrants is increasing as well.
      Marjatta Erharuyi, local director of the Immigrant Services of the Employment Office, feels that the state of language teaching is a cause for great concern.
     “All the time, there are more people needing language teaching, but insufficient resources are putting up a wall.”
     
The Uusimaa Employment and Economic Development Centre has increased language teaching for immigrants, but the centre’s education planner Anna-Liisa Tavi says that more resources are needed for the Economic Development Centre, as well as for the employment offices of the Helsinki region, and for educational institutions.
     “We will soon begin a project to develop a reservation system which will help us assess the need for language teaching in real time. But that alone will not fix anything. It should be understood everywhere that we need people. Machines will not fix this.”
     
The greatest number of applicants in language teaching is for beginners’ courses, but they are the most available as well. Kirsi Seppänen, a Finnish Language teacher at the Helsinki Upper Secondary School for Adults notes that there are problems with more advanced courses as well.
     “The further one studies Finnish, the more difficult it is to find a course, because there is far too little advanced teaching. There is no point in imagining that language skills would be adequate for work after a one-year beginner’s course.”


Links:
  Amiedu
  Ministry of Labour brochure: Working in Finland - what a foreigner should know (PDF file)
  Ministry of the Interior: Guidance for immigrants and integration

Helsingin Sanomat