Helsinki seeks to counteract social differentiation of schools

Special support to stem “white flight” from immigrant-dominated schools

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The City of Helsinki is budgeting more than EUR 1.5 million in the ongoing school year for special support aimed at preventing a division of the city’s schools into “good” and “bad” ones.
      The subsidies primarily affect schools in the east and northeast of Helsinki, where the immigrant population is highest. Schools receiving the additional aid also contain large numbers of children of native-born Finns seen to be in danger of being marginalised.
     
Criteria for the additional funding include the average educational and income levels of the parents, and the proportion of the pupils who have a foreign language as their mother tongue.
      The subsidies are a way to way to diminish the “white flight” phenomenon, familiar in many large European countries, in which families of the native born population start avoiding schools and areas where the proportion of immigrants is high.
     
White flight tends to strengthen the cycle of marginalisation that takes place when the children of the poorest families dominate a school.
      “It is a possible threat, and something should be done to prevent such development”, says Rauno Jarnila, head of the Department of Education of the City of Helsinki.
     
There is little hard evidence that the phenomenon has actually taken hold in Helsinki, and few parents will admit to shunning a school specifically because of a high number of immigrants.
      “People will come up with cover stories. They say that they want their children in schools for gifted pupils”, Jarnila says.
      Juha Juvonen, principal of the Vesala upper level comprehensive school in the east of Helsinki, is familiar with the phenomenon, but does not believe that skin colour is the reason. “The overall socio-economic background is the more likely cause.”
     
“We should probably start investigating gradually if more balanced development has been achieved”, Jarnila says.
      According to Venla Bernelius, a researcher of urban architecture at the University of Helsinki, the phenomenon could be eased by a more even mix of pupils in schools around the city. At present, children of immigrants tend to concentrate in certain parts of Helsinki.
      “If a very large part of the pupils of a class have a mother tongue that is not Finnish, parents start worrying about the development of their children’s language”, Bernelius says.
     
For more than 10 years Helsinki has been providing special funding for both schools and other public services in parts of Helsinki where the danger of social marginalisation is the highest.
      Public schools in the area get more resources for teaching in small groups, social factors are taken into consideration in the allocation of youth workers. Social factors are also considered in funding for public health work.
      For instance, high levels of unemployment in an area lead to higher demand for health care services, because fewer residents are able to avail themselves of occupational health services provided by employers.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Immigrant youths´ hopes and dreams are similar to those of native-born Finns (14.10.2009)
  Immigrant workers are first to suffer from reduced employment opportunities in recession (31.7.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat