Estonia

In recent years, Estonia has emerged as an educational powerhouse. With an approach to education that combines play and child-centred learning with new ...

The population of the country is around 1.3 million people, of whom 1 million are Estonian speakers and the remainder Russian speakers. In the immediate aftermath of independence in 1991, there were no public curricula. The educational attainments of countries such as Canada and Finland were an inspiration, but Estonia's success was built on the initiative and readiness that had already been demonstrated by teachers at the grassroots. Around the same time, my history teacher began to introduce the class to the history of other countries behind the Iron Curtain, such as Poland, Hungary, and Romania. The first congress of teachers was held in 1987. The roots of public education in the Estonian language can be traced back to the Lutheran Reformation in the 16th century. Their programme was ostensibly prescriptive, decorated with red quotes and dedicated to topics such as Lenin's childhood and the "friendship of all workers", but the true emphasis was on the approach. Soviet education required all teachers to take a one-month training course every five years and these courses were opportunities to pass on many of the old ideas and methods to a new generation of teachers. Johannes Käis, a leading figure in the restoration of Estonian education, was key to this development. The same uniform texts and curricula were followed from Karelia on the Finnish border to Siberia thousands of kilometers to the east. It also has a reputation as a country of song, which holds massive song festivals and whose Singing Revolution paved the way to independence from the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. With an approach to education that combines play and child-centered learning with new technologies, the success draws on lessons from elsewhere but also a long heritage of Estonian pedagogy.