Communicating with the Ministry of Education and Culture
On this page you will find information about how the Ministry deals with the matters filed with us and how you can communicate with us.
How we process matters
To file a matter with the Ministry of Education and Culture, send your letter, application or document to the Ministry’s Registry or use the other communication channels we have made available.
The Registry will forward the document to the appropriate ministry official. After we have made a decision on your matter, we will send you the decision or another document regarding your matter.
If we issue a decision and you have the right to appeal against it, we will send it along with instructions for requesting an administrative or a judicial review. If the decision is subject to a fee, we will send it along with instructions for requesting an administrative review concerning the fee.
Ministry contact details:
Official email address: registry.okm(at)gov.fi
Telephone: +358 295 3 30020 (9.00 to 15.00)
Switchboard: +358 295 16001
Fax: +358 9 135 9335
Postal address: Ministry of Education and Culture, PO Box 29, 00023 Government, Finland
Documents addressed to the Ministry of Education and Culture can also be hand-delivered to the Government mail distribution centre at Ritarikatu 2 B, 00170 Helsinki (open on weekdays 7.30 to 16.15).
Or you can file a matter with the Ministry by email. In addition, you can use the Ministry’s email address to send inquiries and messages to us. The Registry will then forward your email to the appropriate department or unit.
If you are applying for a government grant, you can submit your application using the Ministry’s online service for discretionary government grants, if it was mentioned in the call for applications. If you submit the application via the online service, you will also use it to access the decisions and any other documents we send you. If you submit the application on paper, you will receive the decision on paper.
As a rule, you should apply for vacancies and positions at the Ministry on Valtiolle.fi.
Estimated processing times at the Ministry
| Matter |
Time |
|---|---|
| Education licences for universities of applied sciences |
4 to 6 months |
| Authorisation to provide education or liberal adult education |
7 to10 months |
| Average time to process government grant applications, depending on the type and extent of the matter |
3 to 6 months |
| State guarantee for art exhibitions |
3 months |
| Prohibition to seize exhibition items |
2 months |
Archives and registers
The Ministry of Education and Culture maintains a register of the matters it has dealt with and responded to. We use the register to monitor the processing of matters and to ensure that we comply with the principle of public access to official documents and provide protection under the law. The intended purpose of the information systems related to the Ministry’s activities and the data stored in them are recorded in the register descriptions.
As a rule, anyone has the right to access an official document unless it contains parts that need to be kept secret. The request to access a document must be detailed enough so that the Ministry can determine which documents should be included in the request.
Under the Act on the Openness of Government Activities and the Personal Data Act, everyone has the right to review the data concerning them in the Ministry's registers and documents and, where necessary, the right to request for rectification of inaccurate data.
You can access the documents free of charge in the Ministry’s archive or Registry. For visiting the Ministry, please book an appointment with the registry staff.
We charge a fee for photocopying and a fee for the time spent retrieving separately requested documents, collecting register data, transferring data and producing data sets. We also charge any costs of document delivery. We will not give documents on loan to private persons or civil society organisations.