Swedish is a mandatory school subject for Finnish-speaking pupils in the last four years of primary education (grades 6 to 9). This other domestic language is also mandatory in high schools, vocational schools, universities and vocational universities. Furthermore, students graduating in Finnish-language must demonstrate a certain level of proficiency in Swedish (often called "public servant's Swedish"; it works in the opposite way for Swedish-language graduates). Altogether, 89% of Finnish citizens are native Finnish speakers, whereas 5.3% of the population report Swedish as their mother tongue. It is currently possible for Finnish citizens to report a different mother tongue for themselves as many times as desired by submitting a form to the Population Register Center. According to the Finnish constitution and Language Act, both Finnish and Swedish are national languages, and employees of the national government and the bilingual municipal governments are required to be capable of serving citizens in both languages. The official term for both mandatory Swedish and Finnish is the other domestic language. The requirement to study Swedish is often referred to as pakkoruotsi, a somewhat charged term in Finnish meaning "mandatory Swedish" or "forced Swedish," and similarly, Finnish as a mandatory school subject for native Swedish speakers in Finland is sometimes referred to as "mandatory Finnish" or "enforced Finnish" (tvångsfinska). As Finnish is a much more prevalent language across the country, the inclusion of Swedish as a mandatory subject is especially a controversial topic. As an autonomous region, Åland is exempt from the bilingualism requirement and remains exclusively Swedish-speaking. In 2019, the Finnish Swedish People's Party almost succeeded in restoring compulsory Swedish in university entrance exams. In the same year, it proposed lowering the level of Finnish required for Swedish-speaking civil servants and organizing a campaign in other Nordic countries to get students to study in Swedish-speaking institutions in Finland entirely in Swedish. In 2025, the party proposed introducing compulsory Swedish teaching for Finnish-speaking children under school age.
History
The area that today is Finland was an integral part of Sweden proper from the Middle Ages to the end of the Finnish War in 1809. Swedish migrants settled in coastal areas, and the language of administration was Swedish. This prompted many Finnish-speakers to learn Swedish in hopes of improving their social status, with some finn-speaking specially in Uusimaa switching to Swedish altogether. Following the Finnish War, Sweden ceded Finland to Russia, and the Russian tsar established the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. Although a Governor-General was installed by the Russians as the highest authority within the Grand Duchy, much of the political system remained the same: Finland was allowed to keep its ”laws, religion and language” from the Swedish time. The tsar wanted to avoid trouble in the new territory, and also used former Swedish upper class to further modernization in Russia; Finnish could not be used as an official language at this time because the administration did not know Finnish well enough and the language was undeveloped regarding such use. When Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy, there was a big interest in the mostly Swedish speaking upper class in creating a new national identity and exploring the Finnish language and Finnish culture. At some point, the Fennoman movement arose, arguing that the country should be a united nation, with only one language. As a reaction, the Svecoman movement began and grew in strength, representing fears that abandoning Swedish would lead to slavicisation or worse. However, during the 1860s, under Tsar Alexander II, legal equality between Finnish and Swedish as languages of administration gradually began to be introduced. Thus, since the late 19th century, Finnish has been a co-official language of administration in Finland. Modernizations typical for the era were introduced, boosting the status of the Finnish-speaking majority: the special rights of the higher estates of the realm were abolished, and a modern parliament based on universal suffrage was introduced 1907. Eventually, in 1917, Finland became independent. The current form of mandatory Swedish was implemented as a part of the modernization of the educational system in the 1970s, on the initiative of the Swedish People's Party and Johannes Virolainen. Previously, a Swedish test had been compulsory on university level and in oppikoulu, a secondary school that was a prerequisite to matriculation to a university, but not in the common kansakoulu. The introduction of the peruskoulu (student ages 7–15), compulsory for all children, introduced a course in Swedish compulsory to all pupils, while Swedish courses and standardized tests at higher levels remained mandatory. This was primarily motivated by the possibility that any student could become a public official, and would thus be required to know Swedish. The requirement was extended from last three years of primary education to four in 2016, and since 2022 there are three Swedish lessons a week. According to education experts, English should have been made a mandatory subject in comprehensive schools (previously, foreign languages were generally not taught at all in Finnish comprehensive schools), but at the last minute, the mandatory foreign language for all Finnish speakers was changed from English to Swedish at the insistence of the Finnish-Swedish interests party, the Swedish People's Party, against the wishes of education experts.
Current situation
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