Newly arrived, unemployed adult migrants can attend Integration Training for Adult Immigrants consisting of, for example, Finnish or Swedish language studies, classes about society and work life in Finland. The participants, who must have a residence permit, come from diverse backgrounds, e. g. some are refugees, some asylym seekers and some have family ties in Finland. Employment office or municipality's officials may guide the migrant to Integration training, usually based on initial mapping which includes language testing and an interview. Financial allowance depends on participating in the training, so participation may be seen as compulsory. Integration training usually lasts 300 study days, slightly longer than a year. The participation is flexible: a migrant may quit the training, participate in only part of it or can join it after it has already begun. At the end of the Integration Training, students get a certificate of their Finnish or Swedish language proficiency level. It is given on the CEFR scale of four skills: listening comprehension, speaking, reading comprehension and writing. (OPH 2012; VTV 2018.)
According to the National core curriculum and the law, the aim of Integration Training is B1.1 level of Finnish (OPH 2012; Finlex 2010). Only some of the students achieve this target level. Because of this, and low employment rate of the participants after training, a lot of criticism has been aimed at the Integration Training (OECD 2018; VTV 2018). The criticism doesn't take usually into account that the groups tend to be very heterogenous and that the participation is flexible. To gather knowledge about individual migrants' situations, this study focuses on those migrants who participate only to a part of Integration Training.
I have gathered data in 2019-2020 by interviewing participants (54 in total) and gathering information about them from a Koulutusportti register used by Integration Training organisers and employment office. According to my data it seems that there are some recurring reasons for part-of-the-training participation (15-17 research participants): the migrant knows Finnish beforehand, they have completed some other training or program before Integration Training, e. g. Literacy training, they have had parental leaves or are participating in Integration training for second or third time, and thus there is no need to go through the whole training that begins from the basic level.
The focus of this research is on integration and language education policies, assessment and Finnish adaptation of CEFR scales, and sosio-cognitive and ecological language learning. This research is a sub-study of a forthcoming doctoral dissertation about the connections of Finnish Integration Training and Finnish language learning and use after the training. The preliminary results indicate that there is an urgent need to re-evaluate the learning goals stated by the current National core curriculum and the current law.
References:
Finlex (2010): Laki kotoutumisen edistämisestä 1386/2010. [Law about promoting integration, 2010.]
OECD (2018). Working Together: Skills and Labour Market Integration of Immigrants and their Children in Finland. Pariisi: OECD Publishing. doi.org.10.1787/9789264305250-en
Opetushallitus (2012). Aikuisten maahanmuuttajien kotoutumiskoulutuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet. [Finnish National Agency for Education (2012). National Core Curriculum for Integration Training for Adult Immigrants.]
VTV = Valtiontalouden tarkastusvirasto (2018). Tuloksellisuustarkastuskertomus. Valtiontalouden tarkastusviraston tarkastuskertomukset 15/2018. Helsinki [Report about the profitability of Integration Training by the Finnish Bureau of Finance.]
