SAMIedu is an upper secondary vocational education college in the town of Savonlinna and is known as a high quality educator and excellent coordinator and partner in pedagogical development projects. It has won four times National Quality Award from Ministry of Education for developing good practices in vocational education (2003, 2007, 2011 and 2017).
The main areas of excellence are strategical management, collegial system in staff development, auditing tool for teaching and learning processes, management with knowledge.
Location
The maintaining authority is a federation of six municipalities in the region of Savonlinna. Savonlinna is a small town of about 36 000 inhabitants, situated in the middle of a large lake district in eastern Finland, c. 330 km from Helsinki. The main sources of livelihood are tourism, wood, mechanical, electrical and electronics engineering industries.
Education
The number of students in our school is c. 1600, one third studying in vocational education, aged 16-60, for several basic vocational qualifications, two thirds of the total number are adult students either in basic vocational education, further or specialist qualifications or in apprenticeship training. Most of the students come from Savonlinna and the surrounding villages, a large number also from all over Finland. The total number of staff in SAMI is 170.
SAMIedu provides education and training in the following sectors:
- Welfare, business and administration
- Technology and forestry
- Services
The average length of a training programme is between one to three years, which gives a vocational qualification and the skills to work in the employment of your choice. The three-year training consists of theoretical studies, practical studies in the college workshops and a minimum of six months’ work experience in an industry. Over all the studying is taking place in work places and real production environments.
Our institution also offers short courses for employment training in different fields like on line courses, certificated courses for safety trainings (first aid, hot work and chemical safety) computer aided design and manufacturing, certificated training for computer users.
International activities
Our school has a large international network for annual cooperation projects with 19 partners in Europe and Russia. The partnership combines educational organizations and industries in many countries in Europe and the south-west of Russia. Our main activity is student and staff mobility, on the job learning periods in other European country. We have taken part of several international pedagogical developing projects financed by EU.
This co-operation is financed with Erasmus+ funding (Mobility Projects) as well as funding from Finnish National Board of Education (Development Projects). The priorities of the mobility projects include student and staff exchange, coaching for the exchange periods and improving the expertise of the staff. The development projects such as The Russian Network of Vocational Educational Institutions, Kam’ on China Project and European Pathway Project are funded by National Board of Education. That is why we are working in a European Commission network project called European Pathway, Gateway to work. We are piloting long time on the work period for vocational college students.
Annually about 70 students from our school complete their on-the-job training abroad and about 40 foreign students in our schools workshops or some companies in Savonlinna. Approximately 10 members of SAMIedu staff participate in working life projects abroad.
The on-the-job training of foreign students mainly takes place in SAMIedu workshops being so a natural part of internationalization at home, a good opportunity for students to learn to know each other and to improve their own language skills. The students of SAMIedu are also responsible for a lot of leisure programs, which are arranged by them.
Four Quality Awards given to SAMIedu by Ministry of Education and Culture:
For further information please contact
Anne-Mari Behm
tel. +358 44 550 6237, anne-mari.behm(at)samiedu.fi
Finnish VET in a Nutshell
