Kante warns delayed school monitoring could leave students behind

Tallinn Deputy Mayor Andrei Kante has criticised the state for monitoring the progress of schools transitioning to Estonian-language instruction too infrequently, ERR reported. The first state monitoring will take place only next year, when students who began studying in Estonian in the fourth grade in 2024 reach the seventh grade.

Kante said the delay was wrong in light of the reform extending compulsory education, as it could lead to a situation in which one-third of students do not command the language or understand their subjects.

Transition schools operate in every Tallinn district except Nõmme and have more than 17,000 students. Nearly one-third of students with special educational needs also attend these schools.

Kante said lawmakers had left many aspects of the transition to Estonian-language instruction unclear, forcing Tallinn to develop its own measures to support students and provide legal clarity.

“There is no magic wand that would make all children study in the target language on an equal basis,” Kante said. “What is important is that an Estonian-language environment has begun to develop in transition schools. From the first to the sixth grade, all children now study in Estonian.”

He said the state conducts level tests at the beginning of the fourth and seventh grades. This means the progress of students who started studying in Estonian upon entering the fourth grade in 2024 will not become clear until next year, when they reach the seventh grade.

“In my view, considering the implementation of the compulsory education reform, this is extremely harmful, because only in the seventh grade, the third stage of basic school, will we begin to discuss and look for who is to blame if one-third of the children do not know Estonian or their subjects. Such a situation could realistically arise,” Kante said.

Tallinn is monitoring how students in transition schools are coping independently. It is mainly assessing whether they can read in Estonian, understand questions and draw conclusions from a text.

Kante said measuring subject knowledge requires validated tests, which the city cannot develop itself. The Education and Youth Board is working on such tests, and Tallinn has proposed testing them on the capital’s students. The initial response was negative, however.

Education Minister Kristina Kallas of the Estonia 200 party accused Tallinn’s Centre Party-led administration of hypocrisy on Tuesday. Kallas said the city had defended Russian-language schools for years but was now attacking the Ministry of Education when basic school graduates with inadequate language skills could not find places to continue their studies.

Kante called Kallas’s claims unfounded, saying that young people in Tallinn still included students who had passed all their exams and met the conditions for graduating from basic school but could not obtain a place at a school. He said Kallas should take political responsibility and resign.

Families increasingly choose Estonian-language schools

Tallinn has conducted its own monitoring for only two years, so it is not yet possible to identify trends. Kante said, however, that some positive signs were visible. The average result had risen to 75 percent, while the progress of first-grade students in transition schools had been better than expected.

“Kindergartens are doing very good work developing children’s language skills. It was immediately clear that the children’s language skills were improving,” the deputy mayor said. He added that several transition schools also now had classes offering instruction in Estonian as a mother tongue.

According to Kante, families are increasingly choosing Estonian-language schools, and the number of applications to transition schools has fallen. Teacher qualification indicators have also declined, however, from 77 percent to 74 percent in basic schools and from 83 percent to 80 percent in upper secondary schools.

Kante said this was partly due to the addition of new teachers and career changers who were still acquiring their qualifications.