Finnish team:
ABOUT SCHOOL:
Källhagens skola is an upper secondary school with 253 pupils in the ages between 12 to 16 years of age. Geographically our school is situated in Virkby, Lojo/Lohja about 70 kilometers northwest from our capital Helsinki. The pupils in our school are mainly swedishspeaking or bilingual and comes from an area around the town of Lojo/Lohja. The municipalities named Ingå/Inkoo, Sjundeå/Siuntio and Vihtis/Vihti in the neighbourhood send many of their swedishspeaking and bilingual pupils to our school.
The carbon mill in the village of Virkby was for a long period the main employer of the swedish speaking workforce. When Finland lost the second world war against the USSR we where forced to lend the Porkala-peninsula the USSR. This area became a military base where the soviet army had two airfields and over 300 bunkers. Everyone that lived in this area moved to the finnish side of the new border. As a result of the new logistic and demografic situation in the communities around the Soviet militarybase found it nessecary to found a new school. The main chief and owner of the carbon mill, Petter Forsström, became a important patron for the new private school for children from swedish speaking and bilingual families. The ground where the school was built was donated partly by Greta Dahlberg, owner of a manor in Virkby. Soon after that the Porkkala-area was returned to Finland it became a school financed and owned by the town of Lojo/Lohja.
Nowadays our facilities accomodate both a gymnasium, our upper secondary school, a club for sparetime activities, the towns youth facilities in Virkby and a teachingroom for making pottery. In our education we focus on environmental questions in all teaching subjects. Our upper secondary school has an environmental team consisting of both democratically affecting actively planning group and and a volunteering group that participates occasionally. These pupils and our teacher team cooperates with the other swedish speaking and bilingual schools in the community.
Our school received our Green flag/Eco-school status on a sustainable level 2013-2014. Special areas that our school has focused on this year is on energy, water and ecological consuming. The co-operation with local companies and shopkeepers and their local association has resulted in a exibition for cars with low polluting emissions. This exhibition takes place annually in august.
