TALLINN - Many primary school and kindergarten teacher can't speak Estonian well enough to teach, according to a recent sampling.
Ninety six out of 104 teachers from Tallinn kindergartens and Narva schools have failed Estonian language checks carried out by the Language Inspectorate.
After extensive assessment the Language Inspectorate, a government institution under the jurisdiction of the Education Ministry, ordered all but eight of the teachers to take an Estonian language exam in the next year.
According to Leho Klaser, chief of supervision at the Language Inspectorate, the evaluation of 10 Tallinn kindergartens indicated that only six of 59 teachers had the required level of proficiency in the national language. twenty-three teachers were additionally fined for failure to act on previous warnings issued by the inspectorate.
In Narva, a Russian border-town in northeast Estonia, the adoption of the Estonian language has been a longstanding problem; a scenario reflected by the Language Inspectorate's findings. Of the 45 teachers tested at Soldino and Kreenholm high schools, only one teacher from each institution had a satisfactory command of the Estonian language.
Klaser said the situation in Russian-language schools and kindergartens remains rather bad and there are almost no positive changes, despite teachers attending courses and sitting exams.
"Things are well if one out of 20 people checked has passed the exam by the time of a repeat check," he said.
The Language Inspectorate is concentrating its attention on Estonia's kindergartens and schools, perceiving that without educational intervention the non-Estonian speaking demographic cannot be effectively reduced.
Ilmar Tomusk, Director of the Language Inspectorate, told The Baltic Times about the central importance of the Estonian language in societal integration.
"We have to ensure that the Estonian language has a state language status and that people can use Estonian in every area in their life. It is very difficult to understand what is going on in society 's about politics, about the economy 's if you do not understand Estonian enough," Tomusk said.
Despite minimal progress in particularly tough cases like Russian schools, Tomusk remains optimistic about the Language Inspectorate's overall progress in nationalizing the Estonian language.
"We inspect the implementing of language law and we expect the improvement of language knowledge. Language knowledge has very slowly been improved, and that is very important," he said.
"We cannot influence every non-Estonian, we can influence only those people who work in certain public interest areas," he said.
While Tomusk does concede that the inspectorate only has influence in certain spheres, he sees this as more reason to put pressure on the education system and by doing so, influence the widespread
adoption of Estonian by younger generations.
Estonian was inaugurated as the state language following Estonia's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, prior to which Russian was considered the dominant language.
Roughly 30 percent of Estonia's current population is classified as a Russian-speaking minority, with only 13 percent of that demographic claiming proficiency in the Estonian language.
