Reader’s opinion|Self-monitoring, information guidance and self-regulation are not enough to guarantee the basic safety and rights of compulsory education.
Former headmaster Anja Kallio wondered justifiably (HS Opinion 7.9.)why school bullying can’t be stopped. The explanation would seem to be that it is a question of children and young people’s problems and not of adults.
Finnish since the 1990s, the operation of elementary schools has been based on an extremely loose regulation from an international point of view. Its most central problems are related to supervision, responsibility and sanctions. The Basic Education Act and the Pupil and Student Welfare Act are loose and recommendatory in nature. Self-monitoring, information guidance and self-regulation are not enough to guarantee the basic safety and rights of compulsory education.
Now Finnish compulsory schools are not actually supervised by anyone. The legal responsibility lies with the education organizer (municipality or private schools), but making complaints is delegated to the students’ parents, who rarely start a long and uncertain legal process. Even in cases of serious and long-lasting school bullying and violence, school authorities are practically not subject to sanctions.
We published last spring’s scientific article “Achieving school peace requires a student safety law” (Public Policy 2/2024). The article examined serious school bullying and violence not only from educational sociology but also from occupational safety and quality assurance perspectives. We asked how the problem of serious bullying and violence would be approached if the target were adults and not children and young people who are legally incompetent and completing their compulsory education.
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Compulsory schools are not actually supervised by anyone.
We ended up proposing that school peace should be ensured by a student safety law, which would correspond to the occupational safety law for adults. We took the article to the Ministry of Education and Culture and brought it to the attention of the Director General of the Board of Education, the Parliamentary Ombudsman and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as the chairmen of all parties’ parliamentary groups. The few responses we have received have been negative. The then Minister of Education and Culture Anna-Maja Henriksson (r), who is a lawyer, summed up this attitude by stating in a newspaper interview that there is no need for new legal instruments: the existing ones are sufficient.
We do not imagine that enacting the Student Safety Act alone would solve the problem. Real changes in attitudes and culture are always a long process, as for example the history of occupational and product safety legislation shows.
In the new the law should summarize the most important factors in terms of student safety and define how the teaching organizer and the school director take care of their responsibilities and how the activities are monitored, monitored and measured, and what kind of sanctions result from negligence.
Compulsory schools and school staff must be guaranteed sufficient power, resources and tools to ensure safety and promote work peace. Getting a new law would seem necessary in order to give the weakest and most disabled in society at least the same legal benefits as adults
Hannu Simola
full-time professor of educational sociology and policy,
University of Helsinki
Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences
Anna Kronlöf
Doctor of Technology
TKK, Aalto University and VTT
full-time researcher
Antti Simola
Doctor of Technology
3T Ratkaisut oy
a full-service expert in safety management
The reader’s opinions are speeches written by HS readers, which are selected and delivered by the HS editors. You can leave an opinion piece or familiarize yourself with the principles of writing at the address www.hs.fi/kiryotamielipidekeisuis/.
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