Helsinki education authorities: call to limit proportion of immigrant pupils in schools “unrealistic”

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“An impossible equation”, laughs Rauno Jarnila, head of the Education Department of the City of Helsinki, responding to a call by Minister of Education Henna Virkkunen (Nat. Coalition Party), who has said that the proportion of immigrant pupils should not exceed 20 per cent in any school.
      Currently nearly 15 per cent of pupils in Helsinki schools have an immigrant background, and in 15 years the proportion is expected to rise to 25 per cent.
     
“From the point of view of all of Finland I understand the minister. It’s a nice idea, but the problems of the Helsinki region would need some attention occasionally”, Jarnila says.
     The distribution of immigrant schoolchildren is uneven in Helsinki. In about 20 of the city’s 108 Finnish-language comprehensive schools, about 25 per cent or more of the pupils have an immigrant background.
     Helsinki is the city in Finland which attracts the most immigrants.
     
Jarnila feels that it is clear that it is not a good idea to concentrate immigrants excessively in the same area.
     However, there is another side to the coin. Immigrants themselves tend to gravitate to areas, where the residents are accustomed to multiculturalism, says Anu Tanzi-Albi, head teacher of the upper-level comprehensive school in Myllypuro. In her school about a third of the pupils are of an immigrant background.
     She agrees that it would be better if immigrant children were more evenly distributed, as this would give more teachers experiences of teaching them.
     Tanzi-Albi nevertheless says that she does not like the issue to be approached as a problem.
     “The situation in Finland is still good. Immigrants bring many good things to schools, such as different ways of interaction, and a different sense of humour.”
     
It is the experience of other countries that the native population will starts moving away from an area if the proportion of immigrants starts approaching 30 per cent.
      Tanzi-Albi and her colleague Leila Lindqvist say that the number if immigrants is not the only factor that affects the way that a school functions.
      “The question is, if there are enough resources to take responsibility for education in an area”, says Lindqvist, who is the head teacher of the Soininen School in the Malmi district of Helsinki. In her school more than half of the pupils are immigrants.
     
Helsinki seeks to prevent its schools from being split into ones with “good” and “bad” reputations. Special subsidies are paid to schools in whose areas there are children of both immigrants, and native Finns at risk of being marginalised.
      To prevent problems from piling up, measures of housing policy and urban planning are also needed, the principals point out.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Helsinki seeks to counteract social differentiation of schools (27.10.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat