School Police Work to Continue

Last year, the Police introduced a new cooperation model between the police and schools. Its main objective is to reach children and young people in their everyday environment and to provide support and guidance to school staff when challenges arise. The results exceeded expectations, and as a result, the school police model will continue.

For 2025, an additional appropriation of €2 million was allocated to support the initiative. The funding was used, among other things, to recruit police officers to respond to contacts from schools. Every police department has provided schools with a dedicated phone number through which the police can be reached during office hours. In 2025, schools contacted the police thousands of times via this service.

Another key element of the initiative has been the Koulu25 Team, which delivers the Police’s nationwide online lessons to comprehensive and upper secondary schools across Finland. The first lessons in spring 2026 were followed live by 155,000 children and young people. The team has also become well known among young audiences through social media.

Just as important has been the proactive presence of police patrols at schools and daycare centres. Patrol and response units, as well as traffic enforcement officers across Finland, have taken part in this work. In 2025, approximately 5,000 such visits were carried out, giving most children and young people the opportunity to meet and talk with police officers, for example during school breaks.

The Police’s activities have received widespread positive feedback from schools as well as directly from children and young people. Following these successful results, continued funding has been granted to ensure that the model can be further developed.

“New forms of police work must continue to be developed so that we can keep pace with a changing world. From a preventive perspective in particular, our efforts must be focused where they have the greatest impact,” says Assistant Police Commissioner Pasi Rissanen.