TREY made a statement on the accessibility plan for higher education on 27 April, as the Tampere University asked TREY to comment. The Ministry of Education and Culture has prepared a higher education accessibility plan, with national targets for promoting higher education accessibility. The accessibility plan is part of Sanna Marin’s government program.
Promoting access to education is one of the cornerstones of TREY’s advocacy work: students’ different life situations or backgrounds should not be a barrier to education. This means that also in our statement, we ended up supporting the majority of the accessibility plan’s goals.
However, we students also wanted to raise some concerns and we hope that they will be paid attention to when developed further. Out statement includes points like
- The entrance examination system should not create a need for paid coaching courses
- Information on which special arrangements a student is entitled to should be easily found on the universities’ websites
- Students should receive credits from the education that develops accessibility skills
- Students’ feedback must be heard in the development of education
- From the very beginning of the studies, the student must know how to apply for special arrangements
- Internationalization is everyone’s right during their studies: student with children and students with disabilities should be given personal guidance when planning an exchange abroad
- It is important to describe information about studies, student selection processes, and studies on public pages
TREY’s statement on the higher education accessibility plan (in Finnish)
Draft accessibility plan on ministry’s website (in Finnish)
For more information, please contact Aliisa Toivanen, TREY’s specialist in international affairs and advocacy, aliisa.toivanen@trey.fi