Basic education

The Education Services of the City of Jyväskylä are responsible for basic education. Basic education (comprehensive school) is free of charge all-round education.

Every child residing permanently in Finland is obliged to attend comprehensive school. Comprehensive school takes nine years and is intended for children/teenagers from 7 to 16 years of age. This also applies to immigrant children/teenagers residing permanently in Finland.

In comprehensive school, the teaching groups are established by class year. From the 1st to the 6th year, there usually is a class teacher providing education in most of the subjects. From the 7th to the 9th year, education is provided by subject teachers specialising in their respective subjects.

Compulsory education ends once the student has completed the years (from first to ninth years) of comprehensive school, or ten years has passed since the student first went to school. After that responsible for the upper secondary school education, vocational upper secondary education and apprenticeship training is the Jyväskylä educational consortium, www.gradia.fi/.

Teaching is based on a national curriculum for all schools in Finland

In Comprehnsive schools students are supplied with books, school meals and health care free of charge. Commuting to school is also paid for, with the following conditions: the distance to school for students in first to third year must exceed 3.5 kilometres, and the distance for pupils in fourth to ninth year must exceed 5 km. 

Co-operation between the school and parents is part of the teaching process. This co-operation is based on teachers and parents engaging in mutual contact. Examples of this include parents’ meetings, personal meetings with the teacher, and evaluation discussions for primary schools.

The Education Services department is open from 8 am to 4 pm.