Kallas predicts up to 400 students will lack school places

Up to 400 students could be without a school place by September 10, Education Minister Kristina Kallas predicted on the ETV morning programme, ERR reported. Students considered lost to the education system are those whom the state or local government cannot contact or locate, and whose school enrolment status may be unknown.

Kallas said many students had not submitted any applications. Some may have travelled to Ukraine for the summer, and it is unclear whether they will return. The ministry also has no information about some Estonian children who have disappeared.

Many other students have applied but have not secured a school place. Keeping a student in the ninth grade for another year is not a solution, Kallas said. If a student has not received sufficient support from their school for nine years, remaining there for an additional year will not resolve the problem.

Those students need a different learning environment, teachers and approach, she said. Preparatory education is intended for children with significant learning gaps or health problems who require substantially different support from what they have received at school.

Some teachers remain doubtful that preparatory education will solve the problem. Kallas said it was possible that 30 out of every 100 students might not be helped. They could reach adulthood and disappear from the education system. She pointed to Finland, where the number of students who completely dropped out of the education system or remained with only basic education fell sharply after compulsory education was introduced.

Tallinn faces the most critical situation

Kallas said the situation was currently most critical in Tallinn. Children with grades slightly below average could no longer get into any school, she said.

In Kallas’s assessment, migration from other parts of Estonia into Tallinn schools has been above average. With the introduction of compulsory education, more children have chosen where to continue their studies and moved to Tallinn, taking places that had been intended for graduates of Tallinn basic schools, she said.

All Tallinn upper secondary schools are currently full, but admissions are still open at almost all of them, Kallas said. This means students are continually moving from one school to another, with places repeatedly being filled and becoming available again.

Kallas called the situation highly stressful and said the system should be reviewed.

Karl Erik Kirss, chairman of the board of the Estonian School Student Councils’ Union, said the most important thing for students who still lacked a school place was clarity. They needed a contact person from either the state or a local government, he said. Many students, particularly those from non-Estonian-speaking backgrounds, do not know how their studies will continue on September 1.

On Tuesday, Kallas said, the ministry instructed state schools in Tallinn that students who were unlikely to cope even with vocational education, for example because they did not speak Estonian at all, should officially be registered as candidates for preparatory education. This would allow the ministry to determine how many additional preparatory education places the state needed to commission.

Kallas said new curricula had been launched in vocational education over the past two years and that it had become significantly more attractive.