Number of educational institutions slides further

There were 715 active providers of education and 3,236 educational institutions in which around 1.84 million students pursued studies at the end of 2018, according to Statistics Finland.

In 2018, there were 2,234 active comprehensive schools and they had a total of 541,200 pupils. Special education schools at the comprehensive school level numbered 70 and they had 4,200 pupils.

A total of 50 comprehensive schools or comprehensive school level special education schools were closed down or merged with another educational institution. Seventeen per cent of them were educational institutions with under 20 pupils, 27 per cent had between 20 and 49 pupils while 56 per cent had at least 50 pupils.

Most comprehensive schools and comprehensive school level special education schools were closed down or merged in the regions of Southwest Finland and Ostrobothnia.

Comprehensive schools are more often than earlier joint schools comprising grades 1 to 9. In ten years, the number of primary schools comprising grades 1 to 6 has gone down by 30 per cent, while the number of joint schools has grown by 49 per cent. In 2009, primary schools numbered 2,200, while the corresponding figure in 2018 was 1,543.

In 2018, the number of providers of education was in total 13 lower than one year earlier. Of the providers of education, 47 per cent were municipalities or joint municipal authorities, six per cent were central government units and 44 per cent private. The remaining three per cent of the providers of education operated in the region of Åland. In 2018, five new providers of education were added to the Register of Providers of Education. The number of educational institutions was 82 lower than in the year before.

There were 1.29 million students in education leading to a qualification or degree in 2018.