Finland has faced a shortage of early childhood educators for years.
Currently one in five daycare teachers lack formal qualifications to work in the sector, according to the Local Government and County Employers KT, a lobby group for local and municipal authorities.
The ratio of unqualified to qualified teachers is even higher in Uusimaa.
"There's a cycle going on where the position for a childhood education teacher is filled by a qualified child carer who does not meet the qualifications of a teacher. Then a substitute is needed for that child carer," said Juho Ruskoaho, chief economist at KT.
This week Helsingin Sanomat reported that a man with no qualifications to work with kids had sexually abused children between the ages of four and five for over a year during naptimes at an Espoo daycare.
The perpetrator was an unemployed job seeker whom the employment authorities had told to apply for work in a daycare.
Reliance on temp workers
Municipalities sourced some 50,000 public daycare workers through staffing agencies in 2022, according to the Finnish National Agency for Education (EDUFI).
Finland is facing a shortage of about 6,000 early childhood education teachers, according to the Finnish pension agency Keva.
A two-pronged problem
The shortage of qualified staff at Helsinki-area early childhood centres is acute.
"The situation has become critical, especially in the Helsinki metropolitan area, and it is also worsening in southwest Finland. In capital area municipalities, nearly half of the early childhood education vacancies are filled by unqualified individuals," Mervi Eskelinen, an education ministry adviser, told Yle.
She said the problem was two-pronged: too few were getting trained to enter the sector while qualified teachers were leaving the field for a variety of reasons, including low pay.
"An increasingly greater share of my colleagues lack formal training for the sector," daycare worker Piia Kaija told Yle, saying a typical stand-in is a gap year student.
"Substitutes are thrown directly into work without any formal introduction. A high schooler, whose only experience comes from their own preschool days, can be managing a group of children. You just hope nothing happens," she said.
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