Tickets for schools
Travel for schools from 1 January 2024
Groups from HSL area schools can make school field trips with teachers using HSL public transport. The teachers must have a school group pass.
Tips for school field trips
The local education department and municipal education administration are responsible for ordering and distributing school group passes to all basic education institutions. HSL invoices municipalities for the entitlement to travel one semester at a time based on the number of primary school pupils in the municipality.
School group passes can be ordered from HSL Corporate Sales by email at yritysmyynti@hsl.fi. Please indicate the number of passes wanted, the billing address and delivery address.
The pass is valid for one school semester.
Pre-primary education groups with children aged 7 years also need a pass.
The maximum group size per school group pass is 30 pupils. If there are more than 30 pupils, you need another school group pass and another teacher/adult. We cannot guarantee that the whole group (30 pupils) will fit in the same vehicle.
With a school group pass, school groups can travel on all school days, including school days held on Saturdays. School groups can travel at any time of the day.
The pass entitles to journeys within the entire HSL area, that is, within zones A, B, C and D.
A teacher or other adult travelling with a school group must pay their fare using the HSL app, HSL card, a disposable card or a ticket code.
Adult basic education and voluntary additional basic education groups pay for their trips as normal.
When travelling with a school group or other large group, please bear in mind the following guidelines:
- Where possible, travel off-peak when public transport is less busy.
- Where possible, use rail services (commuter trains, metro, trams) or frequently running bus routes to avoid overcrowding on individual services.
When you travel on the metro, split into smaller groups at the station and board the metro in groups through different doors. If the group is larger than 10 people, they cannot all board through the same door because the metro stopping time at stations is short. Do not obstruct the doors from closing. Remember that the next train will come soon.
When travelling with a school group pass, all members of the group must travel in the same carriage. If you have more than one school group pass and there is more than one adult available, it is advisable to split into smaller groups.
Where possible, do not all try to get on the same bus or tram but split into groups of maximum 15–20 people so that the services can keep to their timetables. We cannot guarantee that the whole group (30 pupils) will fit in the same vehicle. When splitting into several buses, each group needs their own pass.
If you cannot split into groups of less than 25 people because the group is large or because the service frequency is low (over 20 minutes), please contact HSL at least three weeks before your journey so that we can assess whether extra services are needed. You can contact us by email at kouluryhmat@hsl.fi. Please tell your planned route, time, number of people and the services you will use in as much detail as possible.
As extra vehicles and drivers are not available at peak times, we do not provide extra services Mon–Fri 7am–9.30am and 3pm–5.30pm.
We will not provide extra services if the combined headways of the services available is 20 minutes or less because 20 minutes is considered a reasonable waiting time.
We cannot provide charter-type services so no more than one extra service is ordered per normal scheduled departure and the extra service follows the normal route or section of route.