Supporting foreign-language pupils in comprehensive schools

The goal of the assessment

The assessment’s main question was whether Finnish-language comprehensive schools have supported the learning of foreign-language pupils in accordance with the City Strategy and the priorities that promote integration in the City of Helsinki. The first step was to assess whether the problems of language learning and providing instruction to foreign language learners have been addressed and whether language-aware and multilingual pedagogies have been introduced in primary schools. Also assessed were whether the city has strengthened the capacity of migrant parents to support their children’s schooling, whether multilingual instructors have supported the learning conditions of multilingual learners in primary schools, and whether teaching staff in primary schools have been trained to recognise discrimination and racism and to engage with diverse families.

Conclusions

The learning of foreign language pupils has been supported in line with the City Strategy and the priorities for promoting integration. The division has sought to promote language-aware and multilingual pedagogy through a variety of measures. However, language-aware instruction is carried out at schools to varying degrees. The division has promoted the ability of immigrant parents to support their children’s schooling, but the measures have been small in scale and have not been sufficiently monitored. The division has added more multilingual instructors and developed their activities, but the continuation of these activities is uncertain due to varying sources of funding. The implementation of training on anti-racist working methods in comprehensive schools is still ongoing.