54 languages with no textbook

Finland’s schools teach a subject that has no equivalent in most countries. A student whose home language is neither Finnish nor Swedish has the right to study that language at school, and the city is expected to arrange it (Finnish National Agency for Education). Helsinki’s schools prepared for this school year by standing ready to teach in 54 languages, in up to 308 groups (Helsingin Uutiset, 24 August 2026, in Finnish).

The largest languages are Russian with 76 groups, Somali with 71, Arabic with 29, English with 19 and Mandarin with 9. At the other end of the list sit Yoruba, Catalan, Punjabi, Tagalog, Wolof and Tigrinya, each with a single group. Last school year about 4,400 students took part, in 316 groups and 52 languages.

The numbers show a city that has done its part. Then comes the question the news story does not raise: what material do these groups study from?

A group exists only if a teacher is found

Mari Heikkinen, head of pedagogical support services in Helsinki, states the bottleneck in the same story: if no teacher can be found for a language, the instruction cannot be arranged. This is the city’s hardest problem. It is solved by recruitment, not by material.

Municipalities are also far apart. The number of students needed to form a group ranges from four to 10 depending on the municipality, and the baseline in the state special grant is four (Kuntalehti, in Finnish). In the spring, the Finnish Network for Language Education Policies, the language teachers’ union SUKOL and the mother tongue teachers’ association called for the two-hour weekly minimum to be guaranteed in law nationwide, and for municipal practice to be harmonised (statement, 14 April 2026, in Finnish).

New municipalities keep joining. In March, Nurmijärvi decided to start mother tongue instruction from this school year, with 8.6% of its students speaking a first language other than Finnish or Swedish (Nurmijärvi, 26 March 2026, in Finnish). A municipality starting now meets the same material situation as Helsinki, without the archive Helsinki has built up over the years.

One group, three levels, several grades

A mother tongue teacher works from a different position than other teachers. Irina Piippo describes the difference precisely: the work is marked by the absence of nationally produced learning material, and it runs on handouts collected from many sources plus the teacher’s own tools (Kieliverkosto 2024, in Finnish).

The groups are also highly mixed in age, grade and language proficiency. Piippo finds that a teacher handles at least three proficiency levels at once. The time available is two hours a week, usually after the school day. In those two hours, three levels and several grades have to be served from the same topic.

Some teachers bring material from the country they moved from, or parents order it online. Not every language has such material, and an imported book does not follow the Finnish curriculum. The employer then does not always approve the order.

The material is the part Bruukki makes

Bruukki writes the material in the language being taught, and writes every text in that language’s own script. Instructions and task wording can stay in Finnish where the student needs them in Finnish.

The source can be whatever the teacher already has. You photograph a book brought from abroad, or import an old handout as a Word or PDF file, and Bruukki reads the text and turns it into material you can edit. Then you ask for three versions of the same topic, one for each proficiency level in the group. AI suggests, you decide.

The finished material reaches the group two ways. You can export it as a PDF or Word file to print, or share it as a link that the student opens in a browser with no login. For a group that meets after the school day the link is practical, because it can be opened at home with a parent too.

In a Teamspace the same material belongs to the whole teaching staff. From the municipality’s point of view, this is where material differs from a teaching hour: material is made once. When one Somali teacher builds 10 hours of material, it does not stay with a single group. The material can also be shared as a link across municipal borders, if municipalities want to work together.

The same need shows up in second language teaching

Mother tongue instruction is not the only place where language and material meet. Changes to the national core curriculum took effect on 1 August 2026. They clarify that the Finnish or Swedish as a second language syllabus is chosen on a student’s actual language proficiency, and they define the transitions between that syllabus and the first language one. Education providers may also offer an additional year of preparatory education (Finnish National Agency for Education, 15 January 2026, in Finnish). Local curricula had to be updated by the start of August.

Behind this sits a steady shift. Of the students finishing basic education, 10% speak a first language other than Finnish or Swedish, where the share was 7% in the 2020–2021 school year. In the Uusimaa region it is 18% (Finnish National Agency for Education, in Finnish). The same material at two or three levels is therefore a need for the subject teacher with second language students in the room, not only for the mother tongue teacher.

What Bruukki does not do

Bruukki does not find a teacher, and it does not replace the qualification route that mother tongue teachers lack. Two limits are worth saying out loud about the material as well.

How well the AI writes depends on the language. In Russian and Arabic a suggestion lands closer to finished than in Wolof or Tigrinya. In a rarer language the teacher’s review carries more weight than it does in Finnish material, which is why a suggestion always goes to the teacher for review.

The second limit is writing direction. In languages written right to left the text comes out in the correct script, but the layout still follows the direction of left-to-right languages. We develop the service on teacher feedback, so do tell us when something does not work.

What a municipality can do next week

Take one language where the group already exists and the material is thinnest. Ask that teacher to bring one handout that works into Bruukki and make three level versions of it. An hour is enough to judge whether the approach is worth extending to other languages.

Try Bruukki for free or book a demo if you want to go through how this would fit mother tongue instruction where you are.

Read also: two teachers, one class, three levels and differentiation with AI.