Tallinn not ready to overhaul its education system

2013-01-23

TALLINN - According to Tallinn Deputy Mayor Mihhail Kolvart, school reforms in Tallinn will be less radical than in many other cities as the capital is not yet ready to overhaul its education system, writes Estonian Public Broadcasting.

Speaking on Vikerraadio, the deputy mayor said that today's education policy needs to be altered due to demographic developments and a new plan for the 2013 to 2021 period has been submitted to the city council.

The city considered two alternative plans: to split all of Tallinn's schools into separate basic schools and secondary schools - respectively teaching grades 1-9 and grades 10-12 - or to split a few schools and establish large secondary schools while closing a number of smaller ones. According to Kolvart, the city has decided to go with the latter plan as they are not yet ready for more radical reforms.

The plan for the 2013 to 2021 period will see the number of secondary schools drop from 50 to 29. Ten of the 29 Estonian language secondary schools will close, as will more than half of the Russian-language secondary schools. Grades 1-9 will continue to be taught at the schools.

“The education sphere is the most conservative sphere and we do not need a revolution, changes should be evolutionary,” Kolvart said.

He added that it is not yet clear which schools will discontinue teaching at the secondary school level.

Only two months ago, the mayor of Tallinn, Edgar Savisaar, said that the city has no plans to close schools as the number of children entering first grade has increased, reported Delfi.

Kolvart explained that the number of secondary school children will decline in the long term. “By 2021 we expect the number of basic school children to increase by 40 percent. It seems logical that after that period, the number of secondary school children will also start to increase. The same set of statistics show that after the growth period, a period of decline in numbers of basic primary school children numbers will await us,” added the deputy mayor.