Pre-primary education in Vantaa
Introduction
Early childhood care in Finnish is administrated by the result area service of early childhood education, whereas the Swedish early childhood care is administrated by the Swedish result area service.
When you register you child into pre-school education, you have the right to apply for an English language rich pre-school, a Swedish language-bath education or a large-scale English pre-school education. The registration is done electronically via the VaSa-service. If you're not able to register electronically, you can also apply filling a paper form.
Prerequisites
Pre-school education is mainly for children who will turn six on that particular calendar year.
What is Pre-primary Education?
Pre-primary education constitutes part of the life-long learning path that begins at home and in early childhood education, and continues after pre-primary education in basic education.
Pre-primary education aims to bolster a child's developmental and learning potentials, as well as to strengthen the child’s social skills and healthy self-esteem together with the child’s family. Pre-primary education is obligatory, goal-oriented, and based on a curriculum. A learning plan will be compiled for every child, together with the children and their guardians.
In pre-primary education, children experience and learn as part of a peer group. Pre-primary education consists of learning packages of varying scope and implementation that are based on the children’s interests, as well as on pre-primary education’s joint goals. Learning in pre-primary education, thus, largely takes place through playing, and there is always time for playing during every pre-primary education day. In addition to play, different kind of experiential and operational approaches offer experiences and boost the children's learning motivation.
Two-year pre-primary education
Vantaa is taking part in a trial in which children will start pre-primary education at the age of five. The trial involves children born in 2016 and 2017. The two-year pre-primary education trial provides robust support for children’s growth and learning. Children participating in the trial have the right to receive support for their development, learning and wellbeing.
Service pledge to a child
- We ensure that the transfer from pre-primary education to elementary instruction is safe and flexible to each and every child.
- We bolster children’s emotional and interaction skills in the pre-primary education and elementary instruction community.
- We focus on mathematical and linguistic skills in our joint learning situations.
- We account for the children’s objects of interest when planning and implementing learning packages.
Errandservices
Early childhood education service counsellors
Vantaa also has several early childhood education service counsellors ("palveluohjaaja" in Finnish). A service counsellor presents the various early childhood education options for families and helps them apply for a place in early childhood education.
Service channels
Vantaa Info general guidance
Vantaa Info centres offer general guidance and support regarding the services of the City of Vantaa and its partners. We serve at the service points and remotely by telephone, email and chat.