The migrant crisis can be seen in Finland in many ways, including a strain on centres offering integration training. Immigrants in Uusimaa and the capital region especially were likely to have to endure a several-month wait before being admitted to courses aimed, for instance, at improving their language skills.
That queueing time has been halved, but a Uusimaa Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (ELY) specialist spokesperson says that new challenges are being faced.
"We have to reassess whether the current study models and programmes are applicable anymore, if the number of people attending them rises to double or triple what we now have," Terhi Martins says.
Between January and September some 3,400 people have begun their integration training. The Uusimaa ELY Centre outsources its language teaching resources from various capital region providers.
Organisers in the dark
One firm that organises language teaching for immigrants, Arffman Consulting, says that it has the capacity to increase teaching but it has not received information on the demand for their services. It has the teachers, but the future, they say, is unsure due to the unknown number of students the future and the refugee crisis will bring.
The company's personnel training chief Risto Rantala says that information reaches Arffman Consulting slowly, and the company is dependent on media coverage for its updates on language teaching demand. The company currently organises 30 ongoing integration courses.
Organisers of language courses for immigrants say they are awaiting the ELY Centre's policy update and a round of price bidding for language services.
Some teaching to go online
The Uusimaa ELY Centre says that both quantifiable and qualitative measures are being sought to improve the worsening situation. Both funding and new approaches are needed.
"New methodology could include various internet learning resources, which could be used both together with personal tutoring and as self-teaching tools," Martins from the Centre says.
She adds that volunteer teachers and civil society are important providers of supplementary teaching, and that she hopes that the interim time between a migrant arriving in the country and being granted or denied a residency permit could be better utilised. Reception and transit centres already offer voluntary Finnish lessons.
A three-year standardisation project called SKYOPE and funded by the European Refugee Fund and the Finnish Immigration Service aimed to improve Finnish teaching. The project ended in June.
"Every asylum-seeker has to change centres at least once, and this campaign sought to make sure that they were able to continue their studies in their new accommodations as well," Kaisa Rontu from SKYOPE says.
