The Education and Training Committee convened on June 10, 2026 and decided on numerous updates to teaching and early childhood education for the upcoming academic year.

The City of Hamina Education and Training Committee met on Wednesday, June 10, 2026, and approved several significant updates to the city's curricula, early childhood education, and everyday services for schoolchildren. Most of the changes will come into effect on August 1, 2026.

The committee approved several updates to the city's local plans based on the new amendment regulations of the Finnish National Board of Education. The decisions concerned the curriculum for preparatory education for basic education, the early childhood education plan, the preschool curriculum, and the basic education curriculum.

In the future, basic education will more actively promote students' active lifestyles and refine local practices related to learning support, special education and Finnish as a second language (S2) teaching. The Hamina Upper Secondary School curriculum was also expanded by introducing two new optional music courses: basic band playing and advanced band playing.

With the new amendment to the Upper Secondary Education Act, tuition fees were introduced in Finland for students from outside the EU, EEA and Switzerland. The law requires a fee to be charged to third-country nationals who apply for a residence permit based on their studies. The committee confirmed that at Hamina Upper Secondary Education, this tuition fee for the academic year 2026–2027 is 10.307 euros per student. The amount is based on the calculated costs of education.

Clarifications on payments, service vouchers and school transportation

In addition, the committee decided at its meeting on the following guidelines affecting everyday services:

• Discounts for afternoon activities: With the increase in customer fees for afternoon activities decided earlier in the spring, the amounts of fee reductions were also revised in a corresponding proportion starting from August 1, 2026.
• School transport guide: Technical corrections were made to the school transport guide for pre-school and primary education and instructions were added for guardians on, among other things, the use of the kouluun.fi application for taxi transport and cancellation policies.
• Service vouchers: The early childhood education service voucher rulebook was updated to correspond to the new Act on Early Childhood Education Service Vouchers (1048/2025), which entered into force at the beginning of 2026.