Ideally Marianne Korkelainen’s high school in Rautavaara, a small town in eastern Finland, would enroll at least 20 new students each year. This autumn, her shrinking municipality will send her only 12. But Ms. Korkelainen, the headmistress, has a plan: She intends to invite half a dozen youngsters from poorer countries to help fill her empty seats. Eager teens from places like Myanmar, Vietnam and Tanzania will leave their tropical cities to come to her snowy hideaway. They will get a Finnish education at Finnish taxpayers’ expense.
The school-aged population is declining in many European countries – and in Finland, more rapidly than most. By 2030, the country could have around 10% fewer children aged 4-18, according to EU projections. By 2040, their number could drop by more than a fifth. This is particularly troublesome for rural schools, which have suffered from both fewer births and migration to the cities. Hundreds have closed their doors in recent decades. Some now offer local youngsters perks such as free driving lessons and small cash “scholarships” to keep them hooked.
The idea of offering empty desks to foreigners is new, and has been pioneered by a Finnish startup. Finest Future sells Finnish curriculum to eager beavers in Asian, African and Latin American countries. Those who achieve good proficiency are sent to interested schools. By the end of this year, the firm will help import about 1,500 foreign students. But it says its goal is eventually to supply Finland’s upper secondary schools – which educate about 110,000 students in total – with about 15,000 newcomers each year. Already some smaller schools are taking in more foreign pupils than Finnish ones.
The scheme partly competes with expensive boarding schools in countries such as Britain. In theory, the savings young people get from free tuition in Finland justifies the inconvenience of learning a language that many people do not speak. The prospect of getting a free Finnish university place, a few years later, is similarly promising. The schools accept because, under current rules, the central government pays per-student funding for each newcomer, as if they were Finnish. Settlers in rural areas value young blood.
Finest Future co-founder Peter Vesterbacka, an entrepreneur who helped create the “Angry Birds” brand for the game company Rovio, argues that all Finns will benefit in the long run. Finland’s total population of 5.5 million will begin to decline in the next decade. The country struggles to attract high-skilled foreign workers (about 9% of its residents were born abroad, one of the lowest rates in Europe). Mr. Vesterbacka believes that foreigners who arrive as teenagers, learn the language, and are educated in the Finnish system are far more likely to stay and succeed than adults who are later targeted through skilled-worker programs. He believes they bring far more money into the country than the government should spend on their direction.
The question is how far these arguments will continue to win out as the plan expands. At the moment, high schools don’t need any special permission from the central government to bring in Finnish-speaking foreigners, provided they have free places. That could easily change. The education ministry in Helsinki has made it clear that it doesn’t like funding places for children from other countries. And focusing on spending on fewer, larger schools may be much better for Finnish children than boosting smaller schools, even if the country’s residents find it difficult. Whatever happens next, Finland’s experiment is likely to offer valuable lessons to other shrinking school systems.
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