Pupils in Lapland travel tens of kilometres to school - sometimes illegal distances

Large slice of tax revenue in a small community can go to arranging transport for schoolchildren

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The spring sun shines brightly, reflecting from the snow cover of a nearby river. Roosa, 14, Saana, 12, and Annika Peltoniemi , 10, enjoy the snow and the light in front of their terraced house in the northern municipality of Savukoski.
      From the yard they can see their school, which is just over a hundred metres away. The distance could easily be over a hundred kilometres, though.
      Officially the Peltoniemis live over a hundred kilometres further north, in the village of Kemihaara, where their parents Jussi and Helena Peltoniemi run a tourism business.
      During the week, father Jussi stays in Kemihaara by himself, as his wife travels to Savukoski with the children - to school.
     
The Peltoniemi family is now the only family in Lapland for whom the local authorities cover their living arrangements in another municipality because of too long a journey to school.
      Although there are also other families in Lapland with children’s school journeys that violate regulations, only the Peltoniemis have opted for accommodation paid by the local authorities.
      For the sixth year now the girls live their weekdays in a 74-square-metre apartment in Savukoski with their mother and their brother Riku, 16.
      At weekends and in the summer the mother and the children live with the father in Kemihaara.
     
Savukoski is in Eastern Lapland, where the journeys to school are among the longest in the country.
      In Eastern Lapland and in the so-called Fell Lapland in the west of the province there are no fewer than 490 comprehensive school pupils for whom the distance between home and school is anything from 20 and 50 kilometres. The figure translates to more than 15 per cent of all the pupils.
      For around 80 students, the journey to school is over 50 kilometres long. At the moment, no pupil’s school journey is longer than 80 kilometres.
     
For small municipalities, the arranging of school transportation is a substantial cost-item, which even affects the percentage of the local tax levied.
      Of the Savukoski comprehensive and upper secondary school students, no less than 60 per cent are transported to school every school day. This percentage is expected to rise in the future.
      For some reason, the number of children seems to fall quicker in the municipal centre than in the outlying villages.
     
According to law, a pupil has a right to receive free room and board if the journey to school is excessively long.
      For a pupil under the age of 13 the total travel time to and from school must not exceed 2.5 hours. For pupils older than 13 the corresponding figure is 3 hours.
      In Lapland there are currently 40 pupils whose journey to school is in violation of the regulations on at least one day of the week. For 13 Lapland pupils the maximum duration of the school journey is exceeded every single school day.
      The unlawfully long school journeys are not just Lapland’s problem. They occur in isolated rural areas elsewhere in Finland as well.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  A long ride to school (1.2.2005)

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