Kristina Kallas (Estonia 200), who took office as Minister of Education and Science in the new government in April, inherited a strong transition towards Estonian language education from previous minister Tõnis Lukas (Isamaa). This means that starting from the next school year the distinction between Estonian and Russian language institutions in kindergartens and primary schools will gradually blur.
When she took office, Minister Kristina Kallas was optimistic that schools with special languages would coalesce on their own in small places. “There are also several schools with purely Russian-language education, there are such small schools that it makes sense to combine them with an Estonian school. I will bring Kiviõli or Valga here, for example,” Kallas said.
In the autumn, when kindergartens started, that is, the issue became concrete, the parents of both Estonian and Russian children became worried. Kristel Kütt, chairman of the board of directors of Kiviõli secondary school, formulated the problem as follows.
“The concern of the Estonian parent is that his child, who already knows Estonian, will not be left behind, because he will have to take care of the Russian-speaking child more. In the case of a Russian parent, the fear is certainly how much the parent knows Estonian. Estonian, if he can support his child, if he gets enough help from the Estonian school teacher. Maybe they take it for granted that the Russian school teacher is more capable of teaching and guiding the child.”
The Ministry must carry out intensive explanatory and preparatory work to ensure that coeducational schools do not turn into schools where some people want to study, but others interfere with them.
A separate problem is the shortage of teachers who know the national language at the required level. Narva has already reported that teachers in these schools will not be able to acquire the national language by next autumn. The ministry announced that there are no plans to grant schools a new extension of timetables when language requirements are relaxed.
There’s a strike coming
At the end of the year, wage negotiations between the state and education workers reached an impasse. On December 12, Reemo Voltri, head of the Estonian Education Workers Union, announced that the indefinite strike of education workers would begin on January 22.
According to Mihkel Kõrbe, a member of the board of directors of the Estonian Teachers’ Union and a teacher at the German high school in Kadriorg, the strike is necessary above all to make sense of the nature of education in society.
“If the strike comes, it will come. I’m interested, and I haven’t quite understood myself yet, if it helps anything, if it irritates society that teachers go asking for money again, because unfortunately the media always covers the increase in teacher salary as the top news every year when it comes to education.”We don’t talk much about the content of the teacher’s job and the increase in workload, but the salary is always a walking ghost. I am not convinced today whether this strike will give something extra to teachers or not,” the teacher said.
“Considering how little the Estonian people go on strike, teachers might end it. And considering that there are around 15,000 teachers in general education schools, if we start going on strike, society will take notice. However, a broader discussion about the teaching profession in society and what is happening in the field of education is necessary. And if a strike is necessary, let it be a strike if there is no other way,” Kõrbe said.
The strike process revealed that perhaps teachers’ salary is not that low, but their burden is too heavy. And that school leaders and parents must understand that the teacher also has the right to her private life.
You need to get a better overview of the use of money
To have a better overview of the use of education funds, former Education Minister and Rector Jaak Aaviksoo was tasked with auditing the ministry’s budget in the autumn. In his opinion, for example, it is necessary to shorten the high school network.
“To create a learning environment, both social and material, the school should have at least a few hundred, and better yet, three or four hundred students. There is not enough for every place, but I think there is enough for most part of the county centres, and there should be enough for the large cities and urban areas of Tallinn to continue,” Aaviksoo said.
Money is allocated for education not only at the state level. This year several municipalities have closed entire schools or school classes. Metsküla Primary School, chosen as school of the year, received the most attention. The Lääneranna city council decided to close the Metsküla school, but the school family still went to the school building on 1 September. Legal matters are grinding and clarity on this story should come in the new year.
In the next year it should also be clear what will happen to the plans to close the high school section of the Toila and Kiviõli high schools in Ida-Virumaa, against which signatures have been collected in the communities.
Trust but check
While adults are looking for money and collecting signatures, young people have found an artificial intelligence or computer expert to help them with their homework.
According to Aivar Hiio, advisor to the Ministry of Education, it is important to establish rules when using chatbots.
“You definitely don’t want to get to the point where the assignment is created with the help of a chatbot, the student solves it with the help of a chatbot, and the chatbot is also used to check the answer. This is really the worst case scenario solution you can get into, and that’s why you need to be aware of it. You need to talk about it openly with students, to discover these possibilities together and maintain a clear common understanding of why we study in school,” Hiio said.
It is now clear that it makes no sense to blindly trust the computer brain, said Terje Hallik, head of education at the Miina Härma Gymnasium.
“What might seem comical is that the work looks so bad and the teacher asks, hey, you usually do better things, and the student says ChatGPT did that. The first case was exactly like that,” Hallik said.
Although there are many problems in educational life, one thing is clear: the PISA test results announced at the end of the year once again proved that the basic education provided in Estonia is at the highest levels in the world.
2023-12-31 15:13:00
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