(, ) is the Swedish-language upper secondary school of

Turku Turku ( ; ; , ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Southwest Finland. It is located on the southwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the Aura River (Finland), River Aura. The population of Turku is approximately , while t ...

, located at the Old Great Square (the town, former capital of

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, is known as in Swedish). The school is believed to have been founded in 1276 for the education of boys to become servants of the Church, a

Cathedral school Cathedral schools began in the Early Middle Ages as centers of advanced education, some of them ultimately evolving into medieval universities. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, they were complemented by the monastic schools. Some of these ...

. The schoolhouse was situated within the wall surrounding the Cathedral of Turku.

Mikael Agricola Mikael Agricola (; c. 1510 – 9 April 1557) was a Finnish Lutheran clergyman who became the de facto founder of literary Finnish and a prominent proponent of the Protestant Reformation in Sweden, including Finland, which was a Swedish territo ...

, the founder of Finnish literature, was the

headmaster A headmaster/headmistress, head teacher, head, school administrator, principal or school director (sometimes another title is used) is the staff member of a school with the greatest responsibility for the management of the school. Role While s ...

of the school 1539-1548. When the Royal Academy of Turku, now the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

, was founded in 1640, the senior part of the school formed the core of the new university, while the junior year courses formed a trivial school. The graduates of Turku Cathedral School were eligible to be admitted to the university. The current schoolhouse was built after the Great Fire of Turku in 1827. In 1830, the city of Turku also obtained a ''gymnasium'', a higher secondary school, while the older Cathedral School became a preparatory school of the new ''gymnasium''. To reflect this, the name of the Cathedral School was changed in 1840 to , (). In the education reform of 1872, the and the ''gymnasium'' were merged into , a Swedish-speaking classical school. In the 1970s, was merged with (The Swedish Girls' Secondary School of Turku) and the old school name , the Cathedral School of Turku, was revived. Since the

Swedish Reformation The Reformation in Sweden is generally regarded as having begun in 1527 during the reign of King Gustav I of Sweden, but the process was slow and was not definitively decided until the Uppsala Synod of 1593, in the wake of an attempted Counter-Re ...

in the early 16th century, the Cathedral School and its successors had been financed by the state. In 1977, the introduction of the comprehensive school system in Turku also caused the transferal of the to the City of Turku. At the same time, the school lost its five lowest classes (age groups 10–15). Since then, the Cathedral School has denoted the three-year upper secondary school at Gamla Stortorget 1, providing academically-oriented secondary education to comprehensive school graduates. In theory, the is the oldest institution of learning in Finland as it has an organizational continuity from the medieval Cathedral school, founded in 1276.

Publications

References

External links

*
Official websiteA short history of the school
{{DEFAULTSORT:Katedralskolan I Abo Education in Turku Schools in Finland Educational institutions established in the 13th century 1276 establishments in Europe fi:Katedralskolan i Åbo