What is happening in Finland?
According to Yle News (14 October 2026), Helsinki and five other Finnish cities are calling for stricter rules on homeschooling. Helsinki's mayor, Daniel Sazonov, says it should be allowed only in exceptional cases, for example for health reasons. In practice, the cities are proposing that attending school in person become compulsory.
What arguments are being made?
- School as a social process. Sazonov says school is much more than learning set academic content. He also presents attendance as a tool for integration, since many Helsinki pupils speak a mother tongue other than Finnish or Swedish.
- Security concerns. The mayor points to concerns raised by the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo), whose national security review suggests that isolated educational settings could allow extremist ideas to spread. Leena Malkki, a terrorism researcher at the University of Helsinki, says Finland should not close its eyes to this and notes that supervision of homeschooling is not always strict.
- A different reason in Tampere. Tampere's deputy mayor for cultural services, Anne-Mari Jussila, says radicalisation is not the reason there. She would simply prefer to see children learning together with their peers.
- The right to education. Left Alliance leader Minja Koskela told the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that Finland needs mandatory school attendance because every child has a right to education.
How many children are concerned?
Yle reports that just over 200 children were home-schooled in Helsinki this year, about 0.4 percent of pupils, and that the number has risen in recent years. Around 1,000 children are home-schooled in Finland as a whole, many for health or wellbeing reasons, and Tampere has about 50. Helsinki's city council decided last week to tighten supervision of home-schooled pupils, but Sazonov says municipalities have limited powers and that not every home-school instructor has accepted more active supervision. He also says there have been no major problems with homeschooling in Helsinki.
What can a school head take from this?
The Finnish question is specific to homeschooling, and the answer belongs to Finnish lawmakers. But it brings up something every school faces: how does the school know, every day, which of its pupils are present, and what does it do with that information? A few general points (these are our own suggestions, not statements from the report):
- Take attendance by class every day, and record absences as justified or unjustified at the time rather than reconstructing them at the end of the term.
- Follow up unexplained absences quickly with the family. The sooner a pattern is spotted, the easier it is to address.
- Keep records accurate and consistent: they are the basis for any conversation with parents, inspectors or authorities.
If your school records attendance on a computer, the ClassMata manual describes how the daily roll call works: Attendance & Discipline.
Source
Source: Yle News, "Finnish cities pushing for mandatory school attendance law", 14 October 2026. This article is our own summary of that report. ClassMata has not independently verified it, and the figures and statements belong to the original reporting.