Financial and Economic Education in Finland

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Financial and economic education in Finland has increased in importance in the past few decades. It does not have a dedicated subject, but the responsibility of teaching these subjects has been divided into several subjects. The school system in Finland has strong traditions of equality and a high level of teacher education, especially since the introduction of the nine-year comprehensive schooling system (peruskoulu) around the mid-1970s. For German readers, it may be of interest that a significant model for the schooling reform in Finland during that time was the East German schooling system. Particularly in the early 2000s this produced very good results in the PISA studies, even though a decline has been recorded in recent years. However, in financial literacy PISA Finland still performed excellently the one time it participated, in 2018 (Laine et al., 2020). The schooling system is unified at the national level, consisting of comprehensive (primary and middle) schools that take nine years to graduate, after which the students will go into secondary education. The choice is between high school (lukio, gymnasium) and vocational education, both of which last about three years. After that, most students either go to universities or applied universities. 

Currently, economics and financial literacy are cross-curricular subjects. The primary subject in which they are covered in is social studies, which was also introduced in 2016 in primary schools, starting from the 4th grade. This is typically the first time students encounter economic matters in their education. Economics is also included in mathematics (starting middle school), home economics (middle school) and study counselling (middle school), but to some extent also in other subjects, such as languages. In high school, they are especially included in social studies, where there is one mandatory course on economics and typically several optional courses, depending on the offerings of the particular high school. In vocational schools, there is a course on personal finance. The understanding of what is “economics” is quite broad in the Finnish school system, and it includes economics, financial literacy, entrepreneurship and work-life skills. However, the economics part of it is very informal before high school and mostly relates to economic institutions, while in high school there can be courses that are closer to economics as it is understood at the university level. In recent years, there have been two developments that are notable in this context. One is the increase in the importance of financial literacy, which is partly a result of increased visibility of the subject both in media and in the political discourse. The second is that formal economics has gained more attention, partly because of the availability of new teaching materials, particularly the free online CORE textbooks, which have also been translated into Finnish. The availability of such courses is quite dependent on teacher skills. Another feature in Finnish economic education, especially concerning financial literacy, is the presence of third parties in providing education. Some notable programs have been Yrityskylä (Me and My City) program by JA Finland for primary school students, Oma Onni (Own Happiness) for middle school students, stock market ambassadors program by Finnish Foundation for Share Promotion and Sijoittajakoulu (Investment School) by JA Finland, both for secondary school students. Also, some commercial banks are actively involved in providing financial education. Teachers are usually quite happy to incorporate these programs into their teaching. 

As mentioned, the increased presence of financial education in schools is partly due to the increased political weight on these issues. The two previous governments (the leftist Marin government and the right-wing Orpo government) have both emphasized improvements of financial literacy in their government programs, and there is a national strategy for financial literacy from 2021 (Bank of Finland, 2021). The original reason for this was the rapid increase of debt defaults due to the increases in the availability of consumer loans (Raijas, 2019). A recurrent topic for discussion is whether there should be a separate subject for economics which would also take care of financial education. I have argued that the presence of the individual subject would increase the quality of economics teaching and would positively contribute also to financial education (Kalmi, 2025). However, there are also potential advantages in the cross-disciplinary approach that partly remain unrealized because of the lack of teacher coordination. Also, teacher education on economic issues should be further developed.

This article is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence and can be found digitally via: DOI https://doi.org/10.46499/2733.3787

References

• Bank of Finland (2021). Proposal for a national strategy to promote financial literacy in Finland. Online: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:bof-202101271069. 
• Kalmi, P. (2025). Mitä annettavaa taloustieteellä voisi olla talousosaamisen kouluopetukselle?. In: Kansantaloudellinen aikakauskirja 121, 1.
• Laine, K., Ahonen, A. & Nissinen, K. (2020). PISA 18: talousosaaminen. Opetus- ja kulttuuriministerion julkaisuja. Online: https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-263-827-4. 
• Raijas, A. (2019). Pikavippimarkkinoiden kehitys ja sääntely Suomessa. In: Kansantaloudellinen aikakauskirja 115, 4, S. 620–637.