Kuopion alue > For Residents > Early Childhood Education and Care

Early Childhood Education and Care

Kuopio aims to make combining work and family life as easy as possible. The dozens of day care centres, schools and clubs in the city provide flexible early childhood education and care all the way from babies less than a year old to young people completing comprehensive school. The values of early childhood education and care are a service-minded approach, confidentiality and the inclusion of children and families. The friendly, genuine nature that is typical of people from Savo make it possible to apply these values in everyday life. In addition to municipal day care, the city has several private day care centres and private family day care providers who take care of children in their own home, providing home-like, unhurried care. These providers are a significant part of the day care services of Kuopio.

Municipal day care
Private day care
Day care and preschool education
Basic education

Day Care Centres

Kuopio takes the side of the little ones, which can be seen in the numerous available day care options, among other things. The Kuopio region has 54 municipal day care centres, 13 clubs, 25 private day care centres and 16 private family day care providers. In addition, families can choose from several open day care centres, which are part of municipal early childhood education and care and provide activities and peer support for parents and children under school-age who are in home care. Education for preschool-aged children is organized in the day care centres. In addition to traditional preschool education, Kuopio has two municipal forest preschool groups. Several day care centres also provide care in the evenings, in addition to round-the-clock and temporary care.

Day care centres
Family day care
Open day care centres
Clubs organized by the city
Clubs organized by parishes
Preschool education

Schools

There are 24 lower comprehensive schools (grades 1–6), seven comprehensive schools (grades 1–9), five upper comprehensive schools (grades 7–9) and two special schools in the Kuopio region. In addition, basic education is provided for adults at Kuopion aikuislukio, an upper secondary school for adults. The two private basic education providers in the city are Steiner School Virkkula and Kuopion kristillinen yhtenäiskoulu. Flexible basic education can be organized in grades 7–9 in Kuopio. Pupils are selected to the group based on an application and interview process. In addition, it is possible to obtain extracurricular, goal-oriented education in arts, which is mainly directed at children and adolescents. The city of Kuopio and the Kuopio Conservatory hold a licence to provide basic education in the arts.

Basic education
Basic education in the arts

When you are moving to Kuopio and you have school children, please check the basic education schools from the map and contact your nearest school head master: Comprehensive schools in Kuopio – School districts