Become familiar with pre-primary education

The Town of Kuusamo assists the person who has custody of a child or arranges school transport, if the distance to school for a child attending pre-primary education exceeds three kilometres. Please, see additional information under School travels and transports. 

A child shall participate in a yearlong pre-primary education during the year preceding the beginning of compulsory education or in some other activities through which the objectives of early childhood education and care are achieved. 

Persons who have custody of the child will register their child for pre-primary education during the first part of the year. Registration will be notified of in the local newspaper in January–February and a separate notice on this matter is to be sent to persons who have custody of the child by post.

Pre-primary education is free of charge and generally lasts one year. 

A child shall be entitled to be provided with any supplementary early childhood education and care based on employment and studies of persons who have custody of the child or on some other special need. In the urban pre-primary education day care centres for children, Kirkkoketo, Nilonkangas and Tolpanniemi, there is not only provided pre-primary education but also early childhood education and care. In the side village schools, for their part, is provided both before-school care and after-school care in cooperation with before-school and after-school activities for schoolchildren. 

Pre-primary education is based on the National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care drawn up and issued by the Finnish National Agency for Education, the local curriculum for early childhood education and care of the Town of Kuusamo covers the whole town. There are no unit-based curricula for early childhood education and care. The curriculum provides the basis for all teaching and educational work within pre-primary education. The curriculum is at the same time both the administrative and pedagogical document: it tells what the children learn in pre-primary education and how to work there. The units providing pre-primary education make their own notices for the school year in which the unit with its activities is described in more detail. 

Pre-primary education is provided about 700 hours during the school year. The length of a day in pre-primary education is mainly 4 hours. The day consists of common moments of activity, working in small groups, lunch and outdoor activities. 

The assessment of pre-primary education is based on the general objectivities of pre-primary education and on the set objectivities in a personal early childhood education and care plan for a child. Through the assessment of pre-primary education we plan and develop teaching and education as well as support learning, growth and well-being of every child.