Vadim Belobrovtsev, Member of the Riigikogu (Center Party)
This is still the level of the impartial press, which accuses the Center Party of the fact that the transition to Estonian-language education has led to numerous problems. When, at the end of 2022, the previous coalition (Reform Party-Isamaa-SDE) hastily and as part of an election campaign adopted the law on the transition to Estonian-language education in the Riigikogu, the Center Party faction drew attention to the fact that in this form it causes a lot of problems.
In a certain sense, it is an impossible mission, because we do not have the necessary amount of teachers, there is also a lack of teaching materials, methodologies, etc. The transition initiated by the Government of the Republic as a matter of urgency stipulates deadlines, qualification requirements, supervision and penalties, but does not solve the shortage of teachers or other substantial problems in the education system. This important part of the calculation was not done.
The transition in its current form means that the quality of education and the level of students’ knowledge may decrease both in Estonian-speaking and currently still Russian-speaking schools. An Estonian-language school has to cope with the fact that already in the next school year, the number of children who speak Russian as their mother tongue may increase dramatically, who will find it extremely difficult to cope in the new learning environment. The Russian-speaking school is facing an even bigger labor crisis, because most of the teachers who do not speak Estonian according to the requirements simply leave the school. There is already a shortage of about a thousand teachers, and the adopted law only exacerbates this problem. Today’s government does not allocate enough money or pay attention to the education of the offspring.
There were also many questions for the government Union of Estonian Towns and Municipalities, but they also remained unanswered. At that time, the faction of the Center Party made more than fifty correction proposals to this bill, all of which were substantive, reviewed by experts in the field of education, and whose goal was to bring the bill into line with real life, so that the transition could start more smoothly. All these proposals were mutely voted down by coalition MPs. Thus, the state has abdicated any responsibility in a situation where the shortage of teachers is already more than catastrophic today.
Now, half a year before the deadline set by the law, we can already see that the problems raised by the Center Party and experts at that time really exist and, unfortunately, the state does not offer solutions to them. Therefore, municipalities, led by the city of Tallinn, are currently forced to do the work that the state has not done. And now, in its editorial, Eesti Päevaleht blames these problems… on the Center Party. We have always been in favor of raising the quality of Estonian language teaching, and we have shown this with real actions by bearing government responsibility: we quickly increased teacher training and started a kindergarten and elementary school Estonian language teacher program.
I wonder if, according to the journalists, the center party members are guilty of the fact that the coalition deputies adopted a law drawn up on their knees, ignoring all reasonable justifications and arguments? It was to be expected that such absurd accusations could be made by the politicians of the three parties mentioned above, in order not to admit their mistakes, but the fact that well-informed journalists take such a view… I understand that attacking the Center Party is very popular now, but some common sense frameworks and the limits of cynicism should still exist. The previous coalition led by Kaja Kallas (Prime Minister) and Tõnis Lukas (Minister of Education) is primarily responsible for the situation, who are comfortable pointing the finger in the direction of the Center Party and the city of Tallinn instead of substantive explanations.
