ADVICE NEEDED_house location_good schooling

Iloveocean · Post by **Iloveocean** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 7:33 pm

Hi group members,

We are planning to buy a house in Uusimaa area next year. Our first choice is the location has good school for my kids, and the surrounding environment is friendly and nice to live (not much drug users, or drunkers...etc). Any suggestions or advice is highly appreciate.

I found on this page some suggestions abt schooling for kids

IB Schools in Helsinki Metropolitan Area
Etelä-Tapiolan Lukio
Helsingin Suomalainen Yhteiskoulu
International School of Helsinki
Mattlidens Gymnasium
Ressun Lukio
Tikkurilan Lukio

Does anyone who has yours' kids study in one of those schools. Could you share your oppinion. Thank you very much before hand!

Kind regards,

**Sponsor:**

SAHM · Post by **SAHM** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 8:02 pm

If you want to buy a flat or house near Tikkurilan lukio, I would suggest buying it from Hiekkaharju. Tikkurila and Jokiniemi are restless in my opinion. Tikkurila because of all the restaurants and bars and Jokiniemi because of all the drunkers and drug users who lives there.

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 10:32 pm

Looking at your posting history, I'm bit confused. Is it really "lukio" that you need to look for the kids now? If it is, then the school locations is not that important any more. You have to apply to get to one anyway, and 15 year olds (or so) can can manage a bit of travel.

Iloveocean · Post by **Iloveocean** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 12:42 am

I look for school grade 1 - 9 for my kids. Thanks!

Btw, My husband checked the house' prices and he said Kontula's houses are quite cheap. How about living condition there?

SAHM · Post by **SAHM** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 11:13 am

Kontula has really bad reputation. I would not move there myself.

Talking about schools, I would choose international school since your kids are not in lukio (high-school) age yet. There are international schools in Espoo, Vantaa and Helsinki. In Vantaa, Kartanonkoski where the school is, is excellent area. So is Suurpelto in Espoo.

Pursuivant · Post by **Pursuivant** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 12:45 pm

Iloveocean wrote: Btw, My husband checked the house' prices and he said Kontula's houses are quite cheap. How about living condition there?

If you ask a Finn:

As the snow flies
On a cold and gray Helsinki mornin'
A poor little baby child is born
In Kontula, and his mama cries...

Then again YMMV and foreigners think its 7th heaven

leisl · Post by **leisl** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 1:41 pm

Kontula is cheap for a reason. My 19yo calls it the ghetto of Helsinki too.

I think that is an exaggeration... there are no "ghettos" anywhere in Helsinki. But notice that Pursuivant said exactly the same thing. You get what you pay for, and if you want a suburb full of restless, bored immigrant teens, Kontula fits the bill very nicely.

Here's the thing: your family is exactly what Kontula already has. Do we really get to judge things harshly when we're the same? Plenty of people will tell you Kontula is perfectly fine.

How old are your kids? If they're all comprehensive school age (over 7) and you plan for them to learn Finnish and build a life here, then an international school is a poor choice in my opinion. Just pick an area that suits your budget and send them to the local school. They will learn much better Finnish there.

If you plan to leave Finland in the next five years, send them to an international school. This might cost you in fees and contact the schools NOW as some are not a simple case of "I want to attend" and you might not even get in (several of them require excellent Finnish skills too).

And yes. Don't ever pick an area based on the lukio. Even for comprehensive, if you choose an international school, Finnish kids travel. Even 7yos can do it.

SAHM · Post by **SAHM** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 5:45 pm

I think that bored teens are everywhere. What I personally would like to avoid are groups of alcoholics and drug users. The international school of Helsinki is private but in Espoo and Vantaa the schools are municipal I believe.

Rip · Post by **Rip** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 7:23 pm

Yes, Kontula does not have a great reputation. As said, international school is a good option if you plan to move out from here as well. If not, then your kids should learn Finnish well (there are regular municipal primary schools now that have majority of non native Finnish speakers as pupils. They too are generally in the cheaper housing areas....). Location is more important for grades 1-6. Although you may apply to another school then too, there is a stronger tendency that the kids are put into the default option that is determined by the home address. From grade seven and up, the kids are more likely to go some school not in their immediate neighbourhood. Most popular schools can be quite hard to get in (grades or entrance examinations of one kind or another).

Pursuivant · Post by **Pursuivant** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 7:36 pm

And Kontula is not *that* bad. Some areas have a "reputation" of old, say like Jakomäki or Hakunila - which these days is totally silly - basically any "hood" that had a high proportion of rentals/city housing. These days it follows a similar logic, adding foreigners into the mix. Any area with bored teenagers congregate is getting a "reputation" and when theres a lot of teens in a similar age group - you get this effect. OK, so Kontula has a few druggies and winos teetering about - like any shopping centre at a bus/rail/metro station. A few blocks in 'that' direction you got the 'lively' housing, a few blocks in 'this' direction you have the posher parts. And all of Helsinki area is more or less zoned in a similar manner. The city even buys flats in houses and then seeds them with... hrm... neighbours you have people here complain about.

The best idea when going about is visiting in the morning (seeing the queue to the bus vs. queue to the first pub opening), then midday, and on an evening. You get a 'feel' of whats going on pretty quick, unless you're totally clueless.

biscayne · Post by **biscayne** » Thu Sep 22, 2016 10:13 am

Whoever said Suurpelto is an "excellent area" in Espoo was on something. Stay away. It does have some kind of International School, because I do hear kids on the bus speaking English to each other (most of them are Russian kids judging by the accent).

I live in Hentta which is an old area of Single-Family houses (Omakotitalot) behind Suurpelto. Suurpelto was swamp which was drained in order to build. The apartments look ok and there is a lot of forest around, but IMHO the place is going ghetto FAST. There were a few "open house" days where they were trying to sell flats for huge prices, but there is a lot of social housing mixed in with that (not necessarily a bad thing but can be). When I take the 107 from Kamppi and walk up to Hentta (long stroll, but there are not many buses to Hentta itself) I see a lot of things which make me really nervous:

- Tatty looking sofas (as in normal living room sofas) on balconies instead of patio furniture - always a bad sign.
- A lot of shaven-headed young guys wearing multiple gold necklaces walking pit-bull type dogs, where I come from, again, always a bad sign
- Police cars often seen stopped outside some of the apartments having heated debates with people
- A lot of youth "hanging around"
- Lots of other stuff, I was not going to mention immigrants because I don't want to be tainted with the R word, but others have mentioned it, so yeah, a lot of lets say "diversity" in Suurpelto

I am not going to stay in Henttaa, I don't care about the big OKT we have. I hate, hate, hate Suurpelto and we in Hentta are hemmed in by it - you have to go through it to go anywhere.

Xochiquetzal · Post by **Xochiquetzal** » Fri Oct 07, 2016 5:12 am

I'm late to this - but for what it is worth, my 13 year old attends the IBS in Suurpelto. It's a brand new suburb, brand new and VERY nice school, with very forward thinking activities and schooling. It's quite different from the ordinary Finnish school she attended for elementary in Tapiola. Contrary to what is said above, there is only one child with Russian background in her class - and that is a boy with a Russian mother and British father. Most of the kids are either born/raised here in FInland, though. Very few are passing through at this point. I'm not sure why people who don't have kids in the school are giving opinions about it, though. We go to the Angry Birds park next to the school and I can tell you that those families don't look like they are low income.

Kontula, however, is very run down and old - from the 1970s. A lot of low income and student housing and the nearby mall is one of the most unpleasant in Espoo. I have a student friend staying in Kontula and she wants out.

leisl · Post by **leisl** » Fri Oct 07, 2016 5:27 pm

Xochiquetzal wrote:Kontula... is one of the most unpleasant in Espoo.

Has Kontula moved, then?

biscayne · Post by **biscayne** » Tue Oct 11, 2016 10:29 pm

Just to respond -

I gave my opinion on the questions posed by the original poster - which is, after all, what others are doing too.

I did not actually give an opinion on the school itself, because I know nothing about it, I just mentioned that I see kids on the bus going to it and as primary education and to an extent secondary education in Finland is good, I assume the school is good.

The poster was also asking about areas, and others did mention which areas have a high rate of immigrants, so I did too.

As I said, I live behind Suurpelto and I make no apologies for saying that while it may start out ok, I just am convinced it is not going to be a "good area". The density is way too high, and they are still building. There is a mix of social and private, and getting that balance right is very, very difficult. I am from Dublin which is a very area-specific city, everything depends on whether the area is decent or not, and we have a built in radar for the smallest signs, trust me. Sure, there is a big forest, the Angry Birds Park and a plan for a big Retail Centre (which I see as becoming a horrible hangout area in the not too distant future). I'm not going to bother writing the "signs" I saw which make me very suspicious, but if I had x-amount of money to buy a flat, I would buy in an area which is established as "good" and I would not be taking any chances on new areas. That is just my 2 cents.

As regards the couches on balconies - I meant they were tatty old things like you see on verandahs in the US south or Australian dodgy neighbourhoods. I am not talking about nice patio stuff or a nice couch on a glassed in balcony, I mean a tatty leather one outside...............

Finland Forum

Find information about moving to, living in and life in Finland