| Name of the reform | Oppilas- ja opiskelijahuoltolaki 1287/2013 (Student Welfare Act) |
| Country | Finland |
| Year | 2013 |
| Educational level | ISCED 0, 1, 2, 3 |
| Kind / type | Laws / regulation of access reform |
| Coverage | National |
Summary
The Finland Student Welfare Act (1287/2013) secures free, comprehensive welfare services for all students from pre-primary to vocational education. It prioritises preventive, community-wide well-being to combat bullying and foster safe school environments. Additionally, it guarantees individual support through multidisciplinary teams, offering students direct, timely access to school psychologists, social workers, and healthcare professionals. The act emphasises early intervention, strict confidentiality, and strong multi-professional cooperation to ensure student success.
Agenda Setting
Context:
Student welfare services existed before the reform but were organised and delivered differently across the education system. The Finland Student Welfare Act (2013) was introduced to shift the focus of school support from reactive crisis management to proactive, community-wide prevention. Previously, services were fragmented across different laws, causing regional inequality. The 2013 reform unified the system to guarantee all students nationwide equal, timely access to psychologists and social workers, while establishing a clear legal framework for multi-professional cooperation and confidential information sharing.
Aim:
The primary aim of the Finland Student Welfare Act (2013) is to promote students’ learning, health, and overall well-being while ensuring a safe and healthy educational environment. The legislation focuses heavily on proactive prevention by establishing early interventions that address learning difficulties or social issues before they escalate. It also guarantees educational equality by ensuring that every student nationwide has equal, free, and timely access to welfare services. Finally, the act shifts the focus to community-wide support, aiming to foster a positive school culture that prevents bullying and benefits all students, rather than reacting to individual crises.
Target Groups
The target group of the Finland Student Welfare Act (2013) includes all children, youth, and adults enrolled in public education nationwide. Specifically, the legislation applies to children in compulsory pre-primary education, pupils in the nine-year basic education system, and students in general upper secondary education. It also fully covers students enrolled in vocational education and training, regardless of their age. By including these groups, the act ensures that welfare services universally support learners from their earliest school years until they complete their secondary qualifications.
Formulation and Implementation
Legislative documents:
Oppilas- ja opiskelijahuoltolaki 1287/2013 — Pupil and Student Welfare Act 1287/2013. Original legislation – Finlex.
Key actions / main measures:
The Finland Student Welfare Act (2013) sets out concrete actions and structural measures to protect student well-being. Every educational institution is legally required to implement a localised student welfare plan integrated directly into the curriculum. Schools must establish permanent multidisciplinary welfare teams, including staff, health experts, students, and parents, to proactively monitor the school environment and address issues like bullying. For individual support, schools assemble tailored expert groups operating strictly under written consent to protect student confidentiality (Evaluation Abstract).
Evaluation and Sustainability
A 2017 evaluation by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) found that the Act had improved the organisation of welfare services and strengthened multidisciplinary cooperation between pedagogical staff, school psychologists, social workers, healthcare professionals, students and parents. Student participation and individual welfare were generally assessed positively. However, access to psychologists and physicians remained uneven, staffing was insufficient in some areas, and workloads had increased. The evaluation also found weaknesses in monitoring, staff competences, and cooperation with children’s guardians.
Sustainability:
Nationally, the Finnish National Agency for Education and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) monitor the system by gathering comprehensive data on student well-being, staffing ratios, and service availability to ensure consistent national quality.
Transferability Potential
The Finnish reform illustrates how student welfare can be embedded as a system-wide responsibility rather than an individual intervention, combining preventive measures by shifting the focus from individual crisis management to preemptively optimising the environment for the entire school community with access to specialist support. Transferring to other contexts would require strong coordination between education, health and social services, clear responsibilities and sufficient specialist capacity. The Finnish experience also highlights the importance of monitoring whether statutory entitlements are implemented equally across regions and whether increased responsibilities create additional workload for school staff.
The added value would be in not only presenting the example but reflecting in each step on what policy makers / knowledge brokers can learn from the reform and be used in their own contexts.