Growing proportion of students learning English at school

Studying English grew in grades 1 to 6 in 2019.

According to Statistics Finland's data. 83% of students in grades 1 to 6 learned English. This share increased by nine percentage points from the previous year in grades. As for older students in schools the ratio was even higher. Almost all children in grades 7 to 9 studied English.

Source: Statistics Finland.

According to the updated curriculum for basic education, starting from the beginning of 2020 all pupils start studying their first foreign language or a second national language at the latest in the spring of the first grade.

Swedish language

The figures also show that 18% of pupils in grades 1 to 6 and 93% of pupils in grades 7 to 9 studied Swedish as a foreign language.

Nearly all pupils attending grades 7 to 9 studied both English and Swedish or Finnish either as mother tongue, or as a compulsory, optional or elective foreign language.

Other languages

German was studied by 9% and French by 5% of the pupils attending grades 7 to 9, mainly as an optional or elective foreign language.

A total of 371,102 pupils attended grades 1 to 6, of whom 189,974 were boys and 181,128 girls. Grades 7 to 9 had a total of 183,063 pupils, of whom 93,684 were boys and 89,379 girls.