Upper secondary education in Taivalkoski: Taivalkosken lukio

Taivalkoski has its own upper secondary school, Taivalkosken lukio. Lukio functions both as a day school and an evening school. Dayschool students are full time students, whereas evening school students are mainly people who are working. The evening studies are organised using distance learning techniques: we have ca 25 upper secondary schools in northern Ostrobothnia which are all connected in the same network. The network schools arrange the courses together, and through distance learning devices one lesson can be sent to even 15 different schools at the same time.

Taivalkosken lukio works as a non-graded high school, which means that the students plan their own curriculum and thus graduate either in two, three or four years. We have worked as a pilot school in different governmental programmes for several years and our staff is highly motivated to further develop the school curriculum both in domestic and international level. We have also received a European label award for the quality of our language teaching together with the other distance learning high schools in northern Ostrobothnia.

The languages that you can study in our high school are Swedish, English, German and French. We have qualified teachers in all the languages, as well as in other school subjects. All in all, we have 14 teachers who are dedicated and motivated in their work. There are about 100 students in our day school, and about 15 students in the evening classes.

Going international is one of our main priorities: we have a long experience in having partner schools abroad. Richard v. Weizsächer Schule in Baiersbronn, Germany, has been our partner school for ten years now. We have had guests from Baiersbronn here in Taivalkoski almost every year, and also our students have had the opportunity to visit Germany almost every year, thanks to different EU funds, from which we have received financial support for our projects. We have  started in September  2009 a Comenius project  to further develop our co-operation with Richard v. Weizsächer Schule, and we have new partners from Spain, Turkey, Italy and Estonia.

Natural sciences are another very important field of interest in our school: the students are offered courses in eg biochemistry, geophysics and environmental studies. A close co-operation with companies and institutions in Oulu area gives new opportunities to introduce modern technology in these fields.