Applicants are expected to be able to follow the tuition and express themselves in all the curriculum subjects in English. Guardians who are considering sending their children to our school are advised to fill out an application form, available on our website, and possibly make an appointment with the Student Counsellor. This visit will provide an overview of the school’s programme and facilities, and an opportunity 
to have any questions answered.

In general, admission is open to all students who can profit from a challenging, international, English language education. Formal application to OIS takes place at the same time as the other schools in Oulu, i.e. in January and the language proficiency assessment aka entrance test is in February. The application form is available at the school’s website How to apply to OIS? | Oulu International School | City of Oulu (ouka.fi).

Students from Oulu or Oulu region apply in January only. Applicants may take the entrance test once per calendar year only. When registering their child to the 1st grade at OIS, guardians should at the same time also register them at their nearest primary school. Residents of municipalities outside Oulu should confirm with the education authority of their home municipality that it is willing and able to pay the child’s education in Oulu.

From those applicants who do not have Finnish skills and move from abroad or elsewhere in Finland, we do accept applications sent at other times and we do conduct single entrance tests in these cases. However, if the child moving to Oulu in the middle of the academic year knows Finnish, they should go to their local Finnish-speaking school. Students who have moved to Oulu during the summer are tested in August. 

If the applicant is other than Finnish citizen, a copy of passport and residence permit in Oulu should be attached to the application. For under-aged children applying from abroad, we require details of the legal guardian in Oulu as the home address of the child and the guardian should be the same. If the applicant fails the language proficiency appraisal, they are allowed to redo the test in the next calendar year. This means that the earliest time to redo the language test is in February.

We have a Transition Class to support foreign children who stay in Finland temporarily but do not pass the OIS language proficiency test ). Foreign children whose families are planning to stay in Finland permanently, are advised to go to a Finnish-speaking immigrant class to learn Finnish and to better integrate in the Finnish society.