Pirjo Sinko is the expert of the Finnish language and reading
at the National Board of Education in Finland.
She is in a way  the "main warrior" for reading skills of Finnish children,
and she was consulted when Shipcat was developed.
She can be contacted by email:
pirjo.sinko@oph.fi

The National Board of Education recommends
the Shipcat program to be used in the Finnish schools abroad
to teach/train reading and literature of the Finnish language.

Finnish basic schools purchased the first version
of the Finnish Shipcat at the beginning of 1999.
The third version in Finnish, Finland’s Swedish, Sweden’s Swedish
and English came out at the end of the year 2001.

We have discussed with dozens of special teachers
about the Shipcat-program. 
Their comments included some of the following:
"A boy, who would not read a fairy tail in a book,
red the same story three times in Shipcat".
"I've noticed that it's easier for some children to train reading
and writing successfully by using computer and Shipcat,
than by writing by pencil".

ShipCat is well known in Finland, used in thousands of
schools or homes -
and still purchased as good learning material.

Several special teachers, who care for over 12 years old pupils,
asked us to further develop this program to motivate children,
who are not interested in fairy tails any longer.
So Shipcat even “grew up”, and one more program,
called Satamakaupungin Katti (Harbourtown Cat)
was produced to order of the National Board of Education.
ShipCat has found a good friend in Kitty and they live
young people’s life in a harbour town.
This programme was produced for special teaching
only in Finnish, because it’s very large.

We have got also a lot of comments from parents:
"Oh, are you the mother of Shipcat? It is frequently used
in our school and our kids loved it!" (Maija Salmi)
"It was difficult for my daughter to read. When she got Shipcat
she became interested and began to train.
Reading really opened up to her!" (Johanna Kukkonen)