Last week, it was reported that municipalities in North Savo have received €272,000 in state funding for the development of basic education. The sum refers to the project Savon sivistyksen suunta, administered by the City of Kuopio and involving 16 municipalities in the North Savo region. In total, more funding from the Ministry of Education and Culture is set to come to North Savo, as some municipalities are involved in more than one cooperation project related to basic education. Similar projects have also been funded elsewhere in Finland.
The background to the cooperation projects is the declining number of children and the tightening financial situation of municipalities. The aim is to build a shared understanding between municipalities and lay the groundwork for practical cooperation in good time, says Jarno Bruun, coordinator of the development work at the City of Kuopio.
He illustrates the issue with an example. In a few years’ time, two municipalities may find themselves in a situation where they are considering placing pupils in the same school across municipal boundaries. If the municipalities are accustomed to very different ways of operating and no shared understanding has been built in advance, such a solution may be difficult to implement in practice.
The two mentors in the Savon sivistyksen suunta project bring together municipal directors of education, principals and teachers. The same mentors were involved in an earlier project related to developing the competence of teaching staff, which ended in the summer. This time, more than 80 schools are involved.
When discussing declining pupil numbers and new ways of organising education, the future of the school network inevitably also comes up. Is the development of cooperation about municipalities looking for new ways to reduce the school network?
“Specifically, the aim is to find other solutions as well, rather than simply locking school doors,” Bruun says.
Current legislation does not allow basic education to be organised as remote teaching, but according to Bruun, the project is closely monitoring the development of remote teaching and the related legislation. Ideally, this and similar projects could help increase lawmakers’ understanding of the different situations in different regions.
Basic education and early childhood education are now among municipalities’ largest responsibilities, since social and health care services have been transferred to the wellbeing services counties. In an increasingly tight situation, municipalities are forced to look beyond tomorrow. The key question is likely whether the shared reflection launched by project work will also lead to concrete decisions when there are even fewer children in schools than there are today.