Students head back to school
It's mid-August and the end of the summer vacation for primary and secondary school students across Finland.
The new school term gets underway across most of Finland this week - with some students returning to classrooms in Tampere and Oulu on Monday.
Students in the Helsinki metropolitan area and Turku will begin classes Tuesday.
Many pupils in Finish Lapland and Central Finland returned to their desks last week.
Aulis Pitkälä, head of the National Board of Education told the weekly Suomen Kuvalehti that spending cuts have created an alarming situation in basic education.
However Education Minister Jukka Gustafsson told Yle that while he shared the Board's concern the government will take special care of primary education needs.
This year more half a million primary and secondary pupils are heading off to school, of them 59,000 will be newcomers experiencing primary education for the first time.
Just over 100,000 high school students will begin their studies on Monday.
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