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In its report published yesterday, OECD says Estonia has too many teachers and students with Russian as mother tongue do not cope at Estonian language based school.
The troubles with Estonian education
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-Children with Russian as mother tongue not coping at school
The problem: due to language barrier, every year increasing numbers of children with Russian as mother tongue opt to go to vocational school instead of gymnasium. Also, they take expensive extra classes to learn Estonian.
The solution: the government should finance additional Estonian language classes for children whose native tongue is Russian.
-Money will be tight
The problem: large investments are needed for free higher education, teachers wage rise, kindergarten teachers wage rise, coordination of schools networks, and modernising of vocational education.
The solution: the school network can be made more effective.
-Local governments and schools do not cooperate
The problem: schools and local governments do not cooperate whereby they could cut costs.
The solutions: bring many small schools under joint management; allow teachers to teach in several schools, and sharing study classes and tech with many schools. By cooperation, local governments could develop transport options and services for schools.
-School network needs to be cut faster
The problem: in 2006, there were 22 percent more students than in 2014 while the schools network and amount of teachers stayed basically the same.
The solution: considering location of schools and study level, to impose advisable number of pupils in a class. If there are too few pupils, the school gets no state support.
-Estonia has too many teachers
The problem: as number of students has dropped, Estonia has lots of small schools with small classes but too many teachers with partial load.
The solutions: create options for redistribution of school staff, allow teachers nearing retirement age to retire, and ensure that only the best among those trained to be teachers get the job.
-Vocational education has a bad reputation
The problem: reputation of vocational schools is poor among students and parents; drop-outs are many; enterprises have few places for trainees.
The solution: vocational education curricula need to be adjusted according to labour market needs, involving entrepreneurs to a larger degree, and cut drop-out numbers.
OECD expert group visited Estonia twice: in June and October 2014. They arranged 45 meetings with nearly 200 people and visited schools in Tallinn, Narva, Jõhvi, Tartu and Vaivara.