According to Keskisuomalainen, drafting of the new law has already begun at the Ministry of Education and Culture.
If this legislation is passed by Parliament, local governments will be required to provide primary education not only to minors, but also to adult refugees, mainly those under the age of 25. However, the ministry will first survey municipal authorities about the feasibility of organizing this schooling.
Even though the present coalition government has pledged not to expand the obligations of municipal governments, Minister of Education and Culture Sanni Grahn-Laasonen told the paper that when that when the government programme was drawn up, it was not known how many asylum seekers there would be, nor that so many of them would be young people.
Grahn-Laasonen's ministry estimates that there are now thousands of adult asylum seekers in Finland who have low levels of literacy, math skills and other basic education.
She said that primary education services for these adults will be started as soon as this coming autumn, even though the legislation now being drafted is not expected to come into force until 2018.