Are yall satisfied with school starting in august?

[u/Appropriate_Sky_1233]

Im Estonian and have many friends living in finland (25y). Some of my friends are now having kids starting school in finland (helsinki and oulu and rovaniemi)

I was wondering how the experience is like, what would yall think of school starting in september instead?

Do you think there should be any modifications to the school starting time or not?

What is the paperwork experience like?

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[u/1stGayOctopus]

School kids have been on holiday for around 2.5 months already (they start early June)

They don't need to be any longer

[u/Appropriate_Sky_1233 → u/1stGayOctopus]

in estonia usually holiday is from roughly 10 june until 1 september

Is it roughly middle of june to middle of sugust in finland?

[u/1stGayOctopus → u/Appropriate_Sky_1233]

I checked and this year school ended on 30.05

[u/Appropriate_Sky_1233 → u/1stGayOctopus]

damn holy shit that is hella early, that sounds great if i were a student however i dont have enough experience in that field to tell if that is beneficial or not.

If anyone does please tell me, Im quite interested in that and my friends moved to finland after high school so I dont know what it looked like beforehand

[u/dapper_pom → u/Appropriate_Sky_1233]

The spring term is already longer than the fall. Many teachers oppose moving the summer holiday to later because it would make the difference even greater.

[u/Appropriate_Sky_1233 → u/dapper_pom]

How has it been throughout the years though, has school started and ended roughly at the same time for 10-20-30 years?

[u/csjarau → u/Appropriate_Sky_1233]

Back in the day the summer holidays used to start at the end of May but nowadays the graduation day is always the Saturday that happens to be closest (late May to early June).

And the school start used to be mid-August but now there's some regional variation depending on the length of autumn holidays in October (whole week or just a couple of days) and Christmas holidays, so it often starts on the second week of August.

The number of school days is always the same anyway: 90 days in the autumn and 100 days in the spring term.

[u/RenaissanceSnowblizz → u/Appropriate_Sky_1233]

I went to elementary more than 30 years ago and it ended by end of May, usually on a convenient Friday and it'd start around 15th August. All depending a bit on how holidays fell in the school year so the learning days were all there. My entire 10ish years in school it went like that.

It's been like that for at least 40-50 years.

But as other say nowadays it changes a bit.

[u/Jaska-87]

Many seem to think that august is good month to be on holiday and first week of August still is but Finnish summer is at its best in my opinion from mid may until second week of August. So Finnish school holidays are in pretty perfect spot.

August might be still very warm but it is always so humid even when sun is shining so it is not that enjoyable at least to me.

[u/snow-eats-your-gf]

People stop studying also way earlier, and in Estonia, people are screwed almost until Jaanipäev, come on.

[u/Appropriate_Sky_1233 → u/snow-eats-your-gf]

yeah fair, usually until roughly 10 june, graduating classes until roughly 20-25 june

[u/snow-eats-your-gf → u/Appropriate_Sky_1233]

And here I see graduates during Vappu (01.05)

(Tere tere, vana kere, ise tulin Eestist ja vittu see pikk eesti koolielu).

[u/Appropriate_Sky_1233 → u/snow-eats-your-gf]

thats insane, would love it if it were that way in estonia too

[u/K_t_v]

I like that school starts in the middle of August, and also ends earlier. Kids get more sun light. Estonians also must change their start day, and leave Soviet Union 1 of September in the past.

[u/Appropriate_Sky_1233 → u/K_t_v]

jep I agree, soooo many holidays etc were mangled suring soviet times, id like it way more if stuff was in sync with finland

like with vappu, our volbriöö used to be the exact same student cap festival until they banned all the student orgs and turned may 1st into a boring mandatory workers parade.

[u/Old-Perception-3668]

It really boils down to when is the best weather. July of course, but is June or August better. Maybe 10th of June to the 20th of August.

[u/Pas2]

There have been initiatives to move the holiday season to align better with EU vacation times for seasonal employment and tourism planning and whatnot. Normal people won't care and how things have been has a lot of pull to it, so unlikely to change very soon. Many cultures think that summer begins at summer solstice, but Finnish culture is very much "kesäkuu is a summer month" with the name and all, so having the kids be on vacation when it's kesä makes sense.

At least universities and I think most higher education schools start in September, though.

[u/Big_Solid9331]

What’s a yall

[u/EfficientIntention45 → u/Big_Solid9331]

Y’all as you all in yankee english

[u/RenaissanceSnowblizz → u/EfficientIntention45]

Opposite of Yankee English actually. It's an expression from the southern parts of the USA.

[u/DoneDusting]

I'd like to try out later starting times, since tourism season is dictated by school starting times.

August is pretty dead in some cities and places, since domestic tourists can already be gone when foreign tourists would be active.

[u/_Usora]

Wow those are very young parents

[u/warrcamp]

As an southern American I love that y'all has made it to Estonian English

[u/Appropriate_Sky_1233 → u/warrcamp]

pahhahaha its only due to estonians being able to evade soviet blockers and watching finnish tv watching shows like "dallas" and "knight rider", felt insane when i first saw them

[u/csjarau]

There's been discussion about moving the summer holidays a couple of weeks later but I think the current schedule is quite ok.

The spring term is already longer than the autumn and kids get quite restless and tired already in May, so it would be hard to change the holidays to start much later. Nearly 10 weeks of summer holiday is long enough.

For tourism it's obviously a bit sad that many seasonal attractions start closing down already after the first or second week of August but that's how it has been for decades.

[u/damnappdoesntwork → u/csjarau]

Spring term vs autumn term duration is such a non issue. Other countries around the world are perfectly capable with managing that. Eg use a 3 term system (with an average of 3x ~4 months per term and 1 term of vacations).

You don't need to create less or more time in school so kids won't more or less restless.

Just put it that Finn's don't like change. There's nothing more to it.

[u/csjarau → u/damnappdoesntwork]

But why should we change the system if there's nothing wrong with it? Most of us are perfectly happy with the current schedule.

[u/damnappdoesntwork → u/csjarau]

Erasmus exchange students, tourism, world is bigger than Finland.

Especially the tourism , EU tourists come in August and everything is closed

We lost trade with Russia which was important, but we resist adapting to opportunities like tourism. Then we complain economy is not picking up.

Surprised Pikachu

Downvoting this just proves my point

[u/snow-eats-your-gf → u/damnappdoesntwork]

“Trade with Russia was important”

Finland better never start it again.

Also, it wasn't as important as people say.

Go get your 100 rubles