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Finnish schools have returned to total normalcy.
“Normal conditions” have returned.
While Americans battle over CDC’s updated school guidance — still incorporating significant masking and rapid testing — Finland’s education sector has quietly returned to total normalcy.
“Good hygiene measures” and preventing crowding are still recommended, but schooling — at every level — “will all be provided in accordance with the legislation applicable in normal conditions” during the 2022–2023 academic year. Specific Covid-19 recommendations from the ministries of education and health are no longer in effect.
In other words, the emergency is over.
In the 2022–2023 academic year, early childhood education and care, pre-primary education, primary and lower secondary education, general upper secondary education, vocational education and training, higher education, liberal adult education and basic education in the arts will all be provided in accordance with the legislation applicable in normal conditions. This means that the temporary legislative amendments laid down and in force during the academic years of 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 due to COVID-19 are no longer in force.
One reason the Finnish education sector has returned to normalcy is that society has returned to normalcy. In Finland, like in the…
