Tallinn says 854 school leavers still lack study place

Two weeks before the start of the school year, 854 young people in Tallinn still do not have a place to continue their education, nearly one-fifth of basic school graduates, ERR reported. Deputy Mayor Andrei Kante described the situation linked to the learning obligation reform as dramatic at a city government press conference on Tuesday.

“The problem is particularly acute among graduates of transition schools, formerly Russian-language schools,” Kante said. He added that 28.7 percent of those graduates currently lacked a school place, compared with 12.8 percent of graduates from Estonian-language schools.

According to data presented by Kante, 480 young people who graduated from transition schools and 320 graduates of Estonian-language schools currently lack a school place.

Kante said the learning obligation reform had not started as intended.

“The state placed an obligation on young people to study but did not ensure that everyone had a real opportunity to continue their education,” he said.

Many young people’s academic results do not meet the admission requirements of upper-secondary schools or vocational schools, Kante said. He added that many also need additional support in Estonian and mathematics.

Kante said the state and municipalities needed to address shortages of Estonian and mathematics teachers and assess the quality of teaching in those subjects. He said all young people should be able to speak Estonian at the required level and that no basic school graduate should leave school with inadequate Estonian-language skills.

He also warned that a growing teacher shortage could prevent future generations from receiving a high-quality education in mathematics and other science subjects.

Tallinn has arranged admission to non-stationary study programmes at adult upper-secondary schools, opened additional places at municipal schools and filled all state-commissioned preparatory study places at Tallinn Polytechnic School, Kante said.

He added that the city could create additional preparatory study groups and was ready to begin negotiations with the ministry immediately. In his view, the ministry no longer had time to analyse the situation and needed to act quickly.

Teacher shortage remains at usual level

Recruitment in Tallinn’s educational institutions is nearing completion. The city had around 300 vacant teaching positions in June, compared with 170 now, Kante said.

“Unfortunately, this trend is continuing. Our system is constantly short of approximately 200 teachers,” he said, adding that recruitment would continue through the first weeks of September and that the figures were not yet final.

The distribution of vacancies has changed, however. The data do not show that recruitment needs are concentrated mainly in transition schools. Both Estonian-language schools and former Russian-language schools need new employees in roughly equal numbers.

The greatest need in general education schools is currently for class teachers, with 15 vacancies, as well as teachers of mathematics, Estonian as a second language and Estonian as a first language. Schools also need special-class and physical education teachers.