Most of the schools in Estonia where Russian has, until recently, been the main language of instruction, still do not equip children with sufficient Estonian language skills, Minister of Education and Research Kristina Kallas (Eesti 200) said on Thursday.

The issue of Russian-speaking school graduates having poor Estonian language skills has once again found itself being discussed prominently in the Estonian media in recent weeks.

Unfortunately, even after 30 years, the issue still needs to be addressed, as the situation has not improved significantly when compared to ten, 15, or 20 years ago, Minister of Education Kristina Kallas (Eesti 200) said at a government press conference on Thursday.

Kallas explained that, according to the results of the spring 2025 basic school final exams in Estonian as a second language, in only four of Estonia’s 60 schools where Russian was the main medium of instruction, were 80 percent or more students able to achieve B1 level.

In only one of those basic schools, were all graduates able to attain B1-level Estonian.

“This demonstrates that in the vast majority of schools – or 56 schools – at least one in five children has not achieved the B1 level, and in a very large number of schools, it is half or even more than half the children, who do not achieve the B1 level of Estonian language proficiency,” said Kallas.

The same problem also arises when fourth graders transition to classes where Estonian is the only language of instruction, the minister added.

“If we know that it takes one to three years to learn a spoken language, a person should be able to speak that language after studying it for one to three years. In that case, by the fourth grade, according to the curriculum, children should have acquired Estonian to such a standard that they are able to speak the language at least at a basic level,” Kallas said.

“[But] what the transition to Estonian-language instruction in fourth grade has shown is that even after three years of studying from first to third grade, Estonian is not actually acquired even at this basic level. In other words, children entering fourth grade have practically no Estonian language skills at all.”

According to the minister, possible solutions to the issue have been discussed within the Ministry of Education. One option would be to start certifying school principals at schools involved in the transition to Estonian as the only language of instruction.

“In the first year, we will pay special attention to the certification and feedback of school principals in transition schools and also analyze decisions made at the school management level that support or do not support the transition to Estonian-language education and the teaching of Estonian,” Kallas said.

The minister expressed her gratitude to the four schools that have taught Estonian well enough for their students to pass the B1 exam, noting that three of them are in capital city Tallinn and the fourth is in Tartu. The school where all children achieved the required level of language proficiency is a private school.

“We probably need to learn from this private school how to organize teaching in such a way that the learning outcomes in Estonian are also achieved,” Kallas said.

“So, in education, the major goal this year will continue to be improving the Estonian language learning results in schools where Russian was the medium of instruction, and we will focus on this again and again and again and again,” She added.

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