Estonian govt denies four Tallinn schools permission to teach in Russian

Photo: Kristjan Teedemaa

The Estonian government on Thursday denied permission to four Tallinn schools to conduct instruction in Russian at the upper secondary level as there are no real obstacles to teaching in Estonian.

The government considered the Tallinn City Council's application of June 19, 2012 to allow four Russian-medium schools of the capital city to use Russian as the language of instruction at upper secondary level. Members of the government found that there are no real obstacles to prevent the schools from teaching 60 percent of the curriculum in Estonian.

According to the information provided by the Ministry of Education and Research the four schools started the transition to teaching in Estonian in the extent stipulated by law in good time, their teachers have the necessary preparation and students in upper grades have as a rule acquired good proficiency in Estonian in basic school.

The decision to switch to partly Estonian-language instruction at the upper secondary level of Russian-language schools was made already back in 1997. In 2007 legal acts prescribed that starting from the 2011/2012 academic year all upper secondary schools must conduct at least 60 percent of instruction in Estonian beginning from the 10th grade. All schools and their administrators have been given a sufficiently long transition period to take the necessary steps for switching to partly teaching in Estonian.

According to the Basic Schools and Upper Secondary Schools Act the language of instruction in upper secondary schools is Estonian. For a school to be able to use a language of tuition other than Estonian, the school's board of trustees must put forth a proposal to the local government who will then apply for permission to the government.

The City of Tallinn made a similar request two years ago which the government declined in December 2011. The city government's complaint against the decision was turned down by the Tallinn Administrative Court in February 2012 and the second-tier Tallinn Circuit Court upheld the administrative court's ruling. City leaders took the debate to the Supreme Court in May this year.

The Estonian government's decision that bars four upper secondary schools in Tallinn from using Russian as the language of instruction is illegal, Tallinn Deputy Mayor Mihhail Kolvart maintains.

The deputy mayor said the decision was made with astounding cynicism and ignoring the Constitution. In his words, according to the Constitution and the Basic Schools and Upper Secondary Schools Act a language other than the official language of the country can be used in teaching in upper secondary schools, but this requires the government's permission which is granted on the basis of applications from the city council and a school's board of trustees. In applying for permission, the latter has to take into account the school's development plan.

«All these conditions were met, but already the wording of the item on the agenda of the government meeting - 'Refusal of permission to teach in Russian' - showed clearly that the ministers had no intention of considering all the arguments for and against and the matter had been decided long before the meeting,» Kolvart said.

Speaking about the grounds for the government's decision, Kolvart said they "verge on the absurd because the main reason for the refusal is that the schools are ready for switching to Estonian-language instruction and in view of this successful schools are denied the possibility to choose their language of instruction."

The deputy mayor said that what struck him the most was that the reason given for the decision to ban teaching in Russian was that students need to know Estonian to be more competitive in the labor market. «Yet the four upper secondary schools in question proved that they give their students good proficiency in Estonian and they have never questioned the necessity of learning Estonian as some people claim for propaganda purposes,» he said voicing the hope that the Supreme Court will give a negative verdict on the government's decision.