Parents take school start-time dispute to court

A group of parents has taken Tartu municipality to court over the decision to keep the school day starting at 8 a.m. at Kõrveküla Basic School, ERR reported on the current affairs programme Pealtnägija.

More than 700 children attend the school near Tartu. Although a government regulation says school days at Estonian general education schools should begin at 9 a.m. from the 2026/27 academic year, Kõrveküla Basic School chose to use an exception allowing it to retain its long-standing 8 a.m. start.

Tartu municipality said the main reason was the difficulty and expense of changing public transport schedules.

“We are in a sparsely populated area, where Kõrveküla school is not just a community school. Children come here from many parts of the municipality,” Tartu Deputy Municipal Mayor Agu Laas said.

Laas said bus schedules had been coordinated with residents’ commuting patterns, making it impossible for the public transport centre to reorganise the system as quickly as the Ministry of Education had expected.

He said a survey involving parents, school employees and students found that 33 percent wanted the school day to begin at 9 a.m., 33 percent opposed the change and 33 percent had no preference.

A group of parents rejected the survey as insufficient. In the spring, 142 Kõrveküla parents signed a petition, while 18 of the most active parents filed a case with an administrative court at the beginning of summer, seeking to force the school to start at 9 a.m.

They are believed to be the first and so far only group in Estonia to take such action in what they describe as a bid to protect children’s wellbeing.

Both the parents and Ott Oja, head of the Ministry of Education’s department for pre-primary and basic education, said modern research supports later school start times.

“We know from decades of research that a later start to the school day largely translates into longer sleep for students. This result is very stable in research, and we also know well that more sleep helps prevent many different health problems, both mental and physical,” Oja said.

Parent Tanel Käär said a clinical psychologist who spoke at the school about children and brain development had explained that waking up was easy for younger children, but became more difficult as they reached adolescence.

“I can see exactly the same thing with my older daughter. In first grade it was still easy, but now, as a young teenager, her sleep rhythm has changed just as the clinical psychologist described. It is harder to wake up in the morning, and she does not fall asleep in the evening,” Käär said.

Parent Marianne Tobro-Kerna said an earlier wake-up time also affected children’s mood and their ability to learn. She said her son had to study at home for a long time because he had been unable to learn effectively during the first lessons at school, adding that tiredness continued throughout the day.