Ligi says no to castes for kids

Photo: Eero Vabamägi

Education and research minister Jürgen Ligi thinks sustainable private schools do have a future but rules out the state maintaining their special conditions vs municipal ones.

-We had a reader call complaining she failed to understand what the private schools were as compared to the others. How would you answer her?

These are private initiative in education desiring to obtain a different education and educational edge. This is nothing but only positive. The problem begins at how to finance it.

Essentially, our financing system has turned out so that basically private schools have greater input by tax payers than municipal schools. Plus all the rights including tuition fee rights. No limitations, only liberties and advantage in financing.

This is unequal competition and will in longer term endanger the quality of free education and this cannot be allowed. And it is not financially sustainable either.

-The reader still fails to understand. Having visited a private school, what have you seen there? What were your impressions?

One might say with private schools there’s more enthusiasm, as is common with private initiative. But people with the sparkle in their eyes are everywhere and the kids are similar. The issue is to which degree they are talked up to be very special and how much advantage is sought for them for state money. And whether they must automatically receive greater state guarantees financially than municipal schools.

This is public services where the role of private initiative is always related to risk. Such financing model as happened in 2020 as an occupational accident is nowhere in the world. So generous and so discriminating.  

The other thing that disturbs me with this of course is that the Estonian school which is global top has been greatly smeared during this private schools lobby and the talk of being special. It’s as if there were something seriously the matter with the Estonian school and education.

This is regrettable and here the feeling of security needs to be restored in parents: excellent education is obtained in every school type in Estonia.

-Private schools have been operating in Estonia for 25 years already. Quietly, with not much advertisement. Why do you think increasing numbers of parents opt to send their children to private schools?  

Incubation conditions, very generous financing.

-Private schools were popping up long before these conditions were created!

Not so. No municipal school has such state guarantee that money is automatically given. To the contrary, the school network is being shrunk.

-But there are the parents who are not establishing these schools but send their kids to such as have already been established. For them, the money isn’t the first thing on their mind.

The total private schools percentage is four. They have hopes to gain an advantage, an aura has been created around the private schools, as well as the enthusiasm. But when citing the chancellor of justice who is a parent just like me: should the system continue, we will fast be in a situation where responsible parents no longer have a free-of-charge alternative.

The putting down of ordinary schools and favourable financing of private schools will unavoidably lead to an educational gap and the advantage will go to the better-to-do and more influential people in the society. Because the private schools select kids which municipal schools cannot do.  

-In Tallinn and even Tartu city centres there are the so-called elite schools where students are actually selected much more than in private schools. Plus the fact that for being special they also take money from parents. That’s!?

This is a very Centre Party self-justification, pointing to others. And education ministry is limiting that: first there is the tuition fee ban, and secondly National Audit Office has criticised that.

I personally have nothing in me against these so-called elite schools. Neither am I against if money is asked for extra teaching. This might be a positive side to private initiative that for one’s money one can buy extra to public service. We must deal with drawing that line and a document will be added regarding that.

-What will it say then, the elite schools document?

Nothing complex. It will be limited to curriculum and that there may be no pressure; and the paid lesson may not be stuck in-between the others. We definitely do not want to do away with the option do something differently in education if so desired, or to outsource deeper stuff, to delete that.

-When digging into the private schools a bit, they also have the curriculum for free and what is paid for is the difference, the specialness, just like the so-called elite schools. Let’s not talk of the few schools with high fees targeting the rich families, as the majority have about €100 tuition fee a month!

This is hogwash, don’t take this serious. Tuition fee is the private schools’ condition, their liberty. Municipal schools are under obligation to provide free school place for all children. Local governments must also offer school place for the four percent who have chosen private schools currently.

This is a clearly other than system, with different obligations, freedoms, and financing conditions. It is dishonest, in such a situation, to also demand advantage state financing. On both sides are normal Estonian kids who are getting an excellent education. There is not quality difference that strikes the eye.

In Estonian education there are three strengths: the excellent overall level; the smallest in Europe percentage of non-performers at schools which is better than in Finland; and a very uniform level regionally and socially.

With a right-wing guy talking like this, there must be a reason. I know that I am creating lots of enemies among my voters with this, but we may not create unbearable gaps in society, a conflict already in childhood. We may not create castes in childhood for public money.

-Glancing at the state exam results, the highest up is the Russian language based Sakala private gymnasium in Tallinn. It is very small.

Very small, very selected company, very high tuition fee, and in Russian language. This is not the ideal. With private schools liberties, they have the right to select the language of study.

Estonian state, to the contrary, wants Estonian to be the dominant language of study. Neither do we want to be in a differing religious space so that in society we’d slit into Christians, Moslems etc. This is also an integration and security problem when in schools there is cultural, educational and even religious segregation.

The ideal is that in childhood children would not be selected into varying situations. We even put children with special needs into ordinary schools, for the most part. We offer them individual approach, often separate financing, smaller classes. We can in no way sat that the children going to private schools are so special as to objectively have special needs. In ordinary schools, the children are special as well.

This has been such a dishonest debate – like my child is shy by nature so how will he attend an ordinary school. Studies show there is no link between class size and academic result. Just the imagination that mu kid needs a small class, a small collective. Thereby he gains something – the teacher’s attention – but also loses something in social skills by having fewer classmates.

To instil in a kid he is special – whether by school, clothing, worldview –, this isn’t the ideal for society. This may be the parent’s choice, but this is not what state educational policy should additionally stimulate.

-Are private schools part of the school network or not? Wouldn’t it make sense to sit down, talk through the rights and obligations, and only then to talk about the money?

What’s special in the largest private schools, Audentes or Rocca al Mare?

-Let’s not talk about these two schools only! In the overall picture, these are exceptional.

Oh yeah we will talk about these! Because as the propaganda goes, 6,000 kids have been robbed the feeling of security. In reality, 4,000 of these 6,000 go to totally ordinary schools. Except that they have tuition fee freedom, establish a school freedom. They do not need to search locally whether there is a need for a school, they just come and establish a school.

Meanwhile, in our schools network we have no lack but surplus. Speaking of societal resource, the private schools add nothing but offer a parallel option. In that sense it is crucial to view school network as a whole. And the one to view may only be the local government.

-Now we are coming to the main thing: the private schools topic is primarily a Tallinn topic. Half of private schools have emerged in Tallinn. A few years back, the very education ministry did sharply contend with Tallinn city government concerning the schools network. It is quieter now.

It is not quieter. We are investing – even this past week I signed a basic schools investments programme, the one for state gymnasiums had been signed already. We are investing so that the school network would be shrunk, fit to size.

Tallinn has indeed been discriminating private schools and rather gone to court, hasn’t looked at the whole. Obviously, it isn’t easy either, though I urge Tallinn to treat the schools the same, look at their quality and location, I also urge them to be swifter to close down the schools that are emptying out. To that end we are providing investments to make schools better.

But is cannot be that private initiative will produce something and forces the city to buy it. The city must get the right of discretion and they do apply discretion but too slowly. But does Rocca al Mare actually want Tallinn to obtain the right to close them down? Probably not. From private schools, the monetary input into school network is thus far meagre, gut rather expanding the school network.

I do not agree to what IRL has offered that local government might obtain the right to not grant permission to open a school. This is not constitutional and secondly this is closing down the market thus anti-diversity. Neither can I accept that a parish thinks one of the two schools is empty and so we’ll close it down, but then the parents come together and announce that this one is a private school now and the state will end up paying for it anyway.  

-If there’s a good municipal school in every way, it would then be easier to put one’s kid there?

 I’m not putting down the parent’s choices. But the role of the public sector is to serve the public interests. If somebody wants special treatment, as these parents do, then the private input is highly welcome. Let them pay! But now they are demanding that the state pay at least as much as to municipal schools and even more.

-This is beating about the bush a bit! Talking about taxpayer money, what’s the big difference for an individual if the money cometh via the state or a local government.

This is not beating about the bush, I am indeed talking about an actual sum. But it is also a propaganda trick that this is all taxpayer money, I have paid mu money as tax payer.

To begin with, the definition of tax isn’t firstly that you must get back your tax but these are collected to do common thing in public interests. No-one can say that the money…

-This is…

Let me finish! I have hears that a thousand times and I don’t need to hear the rest of this sentence to know where this is leading.

Firstly, the tax that I paid no longer belongs to me. Rhetorically, we have messed up the taxpayer thinking. He thinks that this is his money there in the budget and he may reach out as he likes and take it back as he sees best.

Thus it has emerged from the private schools rhetoric: I must get my tax for my kid. Not so, actually. For the tax, common things are done which doubtless is the common school network and the equal capitation fee.

-Should small village school in the countryside, but also in town, be left a chance?

A school isn’t a family, a school is a place for social communication. Teachers are paid wages on the number of children. If she has five pupils in her class, she will never get a decent salary.

And thinking about the children, as a boy said: I want away from here, I don’t want it to be just me and my brother in the class. He has no friends there, can’t get a football team going. Of if he quarrels with his two classmates, there’s none left.

-Even in Tallinn, in the first grades or even till the end of basic school, some kids need a smaller school till they grow and socialise easier. This is the hole the private schools have filled, and this is the specialness.

The kind of a school a kid needs is not for the parent – who wants her kid to look special – to determine but for a specialist. Specialists have not found that there would be more of the special kids going to private schools. To the contrary, in municipal school the percentage of kids with special needs is higher.

-New things do not appear where there is no empty place. This lets us know in which direction the education should go.

Why do we assume that the parents are the most unbiased decision makers? We have had the sects and miracle cures come up directly damaging the children. This isn’t a criterion, but what is one is that every parent prefers the best school for her child. Can’t get into the best name school, so she seeks out the next. As happened with the basic school created by Tallinna Reaalkool (Tallinn Secondary Science School – edit).

They are using the municipal trademark, the same resource in order to enlarge admission to those who failed to enroll. This is no new quality, but expansion of school network, and that on taxpayer account.

Luckily, there are places missing in city centre but the overall truth also is that societal costs are not expressed in additional tuition fee but the parallel price. Mechanically creating parallels as happens with total liberty may therefore not bring double state financing. This has also very sharply been stated by chancellor of justice and auditor general.

Constitutionally, local governments are obligated to maintain a school network and when there then comes a private entrepreneur who competes without equal obligation plus tuition fee, we have a problem.   

The state may not compete against municipal schools which is currently the situation and is essentially unconstitutional; rather, it must hand comparable decision mechanisms to local governments. The state says all children are needed and all get capitation fee, but whether the box costs ought to be paid to a school must be for the local community to decide. It cannot be that I build a nicer school next to the municipal school, attract stronger teachers with preferential financing along with smarter kids, because then the paid education will also decide for those who would wish to remain in the municipal school.

They saw that in Chile, they had total segregation emerge, class hatred. At a certain point, only the elite was getting educated, and the wealthy bunch. But the common people…

-Comparing Estonia with Chile – not too good an example!

It is an excellent example!

-Estonian and Chilean cultures do differ so much as to avoid ever creating such a situation in Estonia!

This is an ideal example as this is the way their culture and the only place we find the same system is in Chile.

We have studied the Nordics – they only have restrictions on private schools. In Finland, for instance, tuition fee isn’t allowed, very strict limitations apply to establishing schools,  you must offer an alternative with something, you must get a licence from both the state and the local government. In our constitution the latter is outright forbidden, we have a lot more liberty constitutionally. In the Nordics they have a ban on selecting the children, on paying higher salaries. Minimal sizes for schools.

We are talking about four or fifteen children, but in other places they have set a minimum at 250 kids say.

-The Finnish population is substantially larger too.

In Finnish school districts there are fewer people than here. Putting together the regulations created by various nations, the general principles are characterised by ban on tuition fees or cuts to state support on account of these, pay caps, smallness limits, obligation to offer educational alternative, permits by state and local government, no parallels created – we have none of that neither is anybody planning it, but this is reflecting the social risks of educational stratification sensed a century ago.

-Do you argue that private schools have not had a qualitative input into general education?

They have had a diversity input, but not a specific know-how. But what comes with private initiative is the greater enthusiasm and need to prove oneself. This surely has a positive outcome.

What they have offered which is special is the Christian schools which is important for some parents. This is a thousand children approximately, and another thousand in Waldorf schools. There, the quality is measured in diversity, especially in the Waldorf schools.

With Christianity, it is very difficult to make a difference as we would have to grant other religions the right for educational separation with obvious policy risks. There is a reason for the division of church and state and in education this is prudent. Which will not mean that we could not offer them the more secularly defined support.

We want to separately finance diversity, but in the private schools there is less of this than is talked about. We do offer some positive discrimination for those that are special but this is not a sum that would cover operational costs as is pondered by local government.

Via our party we have stirred the local governments to support private schools. This is continuing in Pärnu, Tartu, Keila, Viljandi. Ut not the four pupil schools.