A solution has been found to the eternal teacher shortage in Helsinki kindergartens

The six largest cities and the state have been quietly preparing a new model to train 2,000 teachers and social workers for daycare centers.

Finland’s six largest cities plan to train 2,000 early childhood education teachers and social workers for daycare centers. Childminders already working there can apply for the training.

The state is funding the project with six million euros per year for the time being. Cities are currently making decisions about purchasing education from universities until 2030.

The training will be carried out alongside work. The aim is to solve the long-term staff shortage in daycare centers, which is predicted to worsen.

A solution may have been found to the eternal problem of Helsinki’s daycare centers.

Daycare centers in the Helsinki metropolitan area have long lacked roughly half of their qualified teachers.

Now Finland’s six largest cities plan to train a total of approximately 2,000 early childhood education teachers and social workers so that the trainees will already be their employees.

Kuusikko has already received millions from the state, with which they are ordering specialized training for childminders from universities.

A higher education degree has been studied alongside work in conversion training before, but the scale here is enormous and the arrangements exceptional. The state pays the bill, and the municipal employer uses the money to order tailored training for its employees from universities and polytechnics.

If the experiment is successful, something similar could be replicated in other sectors with labor shortages.

Money has only been distributed to Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Turku and Oulu. So not to other municipalities, even though the teacher shortage is nationwide.

Different solutions are being considered for other cities and municipalities. The Ministry of Education justifies this by saying that the challenges in large cities are different.

“The population is still growing,” sums up Education Advisor Mervi Eskelinen.

Due to the declining birth rate, the number of children in daycare centers will soon collapse in many locations, but not in the Helsinki metropolitan area.

The shortage of teachers in daycare centers has continued for years. When enough qualified teachers have not been hired, the work has been practically done by childminders. Previously, there was also a shortage of caregivers, but now there are fewer job openings for them in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.

The need for kindergarten teachers and social workers is growing. The law stipulates that by 2030, two-thirds of them must have a university degree in the field. At the same time, many current employees will retire.

Large cities calculate that they need a total of 8,000 more teachers and social workers in their daycare centers by 2032.

“There is no longer as much need for childminders as there is today. One reason for doing this is to give them the opportunity to train,” explains project manager Jesse Myllylahti from the City of Helsinki.

The current government and the six cities have previously formed an alliance whose task is to think about solutions specifically to the problems of large cities. The shortage of staff in daycare centers is one of these, and custom training is only part of the solution.

The largest number of future teachers and social workers will come from higher education institutions via the same route as before. The number of starting positions has increased in recent years.

There are also smaller new openings. For example, Helsinki is bringing in early childhood education teachers from abroad for the second time next year, this time around twenty professionals.

Custom training makes sense for employers because those who start studying already know what they are getting into. They do not need to be separately enticed to move to Helsinki or stay in the industry.

In the spring, large cities have initially asked their personnel about their willingness to undergo additional training. There is.

The state has granted six million euros in funding per year for on-demand training.

The exact number of professionals to be trained and their distribution across cities will be determined later. The preliminary estimate is that Helsinki will receive 37 percent of the money and the Helsinki Metropolitan Area will receive over 70 percent in total.

Based on this, it can be estimated that Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa could receive a total of just under 1,500 professionals with university degrees this year. Of these, approximately 900 would be teachers.

We are already so far along with universities of applied sciences that politicians in Helsinki decided in May to purchase Finnish-language education for social workers until 2030.

The cheapest offer was made by Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences and LAB University of Applied Sciences. The agreement includes an option for a two-year extension on the same terms.

Other large cities will make their own political decisions on the matter. Those who want to become sociologists could thus be selected in the fall and the first students could start next year.

No offers were received from universities in the first round of competition. The new round, which will end soon, looks promising, so teacher training could also begin next year.

Myllylahti says that the conditions were changed slightly at the request of the universities. A university or university association no longer has to register as a trainer for professionals in all six cities, but can offer training, for example, only in the Helsinki metropolitan area.

According to Myllylahti, universities have also been interested in the model.

Cities and educational institutions are currently considering in more detail how students are selected. At least not based on certificates.

The idea is that interested childminders will soon be able to register and share their background. There is no entrance exam, but you can only continue your studies if you do well in the first phase.

Studies are done alongside work. There must be at least a couple of days of face-to-face teaching per month, but a lot of it happens online.

Will the employer then also be able to dictate the content of the education? Eskelinen from the Ministry of Education reminds us that the law guarantees that this power remains with the universities and polytechnics themselves.

“This is not a light education, but requires the same quality as other higher education degrees.”