from Christian Pleijel

On the Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea, kids are back in school after summer. Sven, 6 years old on the island of Sottunga, is the only student in first grade – in fact, he’s the only student in the whole school.

This is intriguing. How can there be a school with just one pupil? How many students are needed to run a school? Sottunga is my neighbouring island, just a one-hour ferry ride away. Let’s have a closer look!

The island is 28 km² in size, similar to Chalki in the Dodecanese or Shapinsay in Scotland. Sottunga is a municipality surrounded by 314 km² sea, which unlike Chalki or Shapinsay belongs to the community. Similar to Chalki and Shapinsay the population has steadily declined in the last decades. In 2019 there were 88 residents who were aged 60 on average. Lacking students, the school on the island closed.

Then something unexpected happened: In 2020, three young families moved in from Sweden, followed by six more families the next year, all in all 13 adults and 20 kids aged 1-11 years. These parents wanted to school their kids at home. They wanted to tailor the curriculum to their children’s individual needs and learning styles, learning at their own pace, aligned with the parent’s religious, moral, or philosophical beliefs, avoid bullying, overcrowded classrooms, standardized testing pressure, and teaching to the test. In Sweden, homeschooling is not allowed but it is in Finland. The COVID-19 pandemic sparked this off. These families found an alternative on Sottunga to in-person learning during lockdowns. But the modern, well-equipped school remained closed.

Until one family changed their mind and asked to put Sven in school.

Schools are run by municipalities with state subsidies. There are curriculums. Teachers should be trained to do a proper job. Students should learn to read, write and count, communication, problem solving and social skills. Is that possible with just one kid in school?

In this case, the municipal council of Sottunga decided to reopen the school. They engaged Pia, a teacher 28 years old who just graduated from university. She has moved to the island. In two years, Sven’s little sister Hilda will start school and so will two other children whose parents have come to understand this school and this municipality does not have the bad features of schooling which they moved away from.

Sven and Pia: Photo by: Robert Jansson, Alandstidningen

– “It is a positive cost,”, says the mayor of Sottunga Kennet Lundström. “Being able to reopen the school is something that people here look forward to.”

Article 10:3 of the 1992 European Union treaty states: “Decisions must be made as openly and as close to the citizens as possible.” This is an example of what happens when islands are run by themselves which is the case of 202 out of Europe’s 2,400 inhabited islands.