A hundred years after the folk school system was established, it was time for concrete
change. Traditionally, people had left folk school and gone on to civic school and from
there to working life, or on to lower secondary school and from there to upper secondary
school, which opened the way to an academic career. The time was right to combine folk
school, civic school and lower secondary school into a 9-year comprehensive school. In
Finland, the transition to comprehensive school took place gradually between 1972 and
1977, starting in Northern Finland. The first comprehensive school curriculum to be implemented
in its entirety across the whole country was for the 1981–82 school year.
Lowering the age of starting compulsory school and the development of pre-school education
were particularly prevalent issues in the 1970’s. The Act on the Premises of the School
System alone contained the notion that the municipal school system could include a kindergarten
or pre-school classes. Different pre-school committees set in the 70’s presented various
alternatives and approaches to developing day care for children under school age and to
reforming initial education at comprehensive school. However, the objectives of these
committees failed to materialise at the time.
In the 1980’s, policy definitions in society developed in the direction that reforms were no
longer formulated on the basis of integrated systemic solutions. Instead, there was a preference
to develop the services provided by existing organisations. The objectives, contents
and implementation methods of early childhood education and care and pre-school education
for six-year-olds were developed both in the 1970’s and in the 1980’s.
The pre-school experiment was first launched in 1971 in co-operation between school and
social administrations in both comprehensive schools and day-care centres. At the time,
curricula and pre-school models were developed in various operating environments. These
experiments involved research at three universities. As a result of experimental activities,
opportunities for the provision of pre-school education at comprehensive schools were created
starting from 1985, which, however, required a licence from the Ministry of Education.
The purpose was to introduce pre-school education into sparsely populated areas, where
day-care services were unavailable.