Representatives of the Isamaa party in the Tallinn City Council proposed removing the word «Russian» from the names of five high schools in the capital, but the ruling Center Party opposes this idea, writes ERR News.
Vadim Belobrovtsev, the representative of the Center Party, Tallinn’s deputy mayor for education, said:
«This whole idea of renaming schools seems crazy to me from the outset.
There is a city council ordinance which states the name of an institution can be changed when its functions or services provided change. In the case of these schools, their functions and services will remain the same, however.»
Although the idea of changing the name arose last year, the Isamaa deputies submitted the proposals before the council meeting scheduled for Thursday, the 23rd of March.
The leader of the Isamaa faction in the Tallinn City Council, Karl Sander Kase, stated that there are five schools in Tallinn with the word «Russian» in their name. He added that
name change is necessary to support the transition to education in estonian only.
Belobrovtsev, on the other hand, argued that the issue could be considered if the schools themselves wanted to change the name. He also emphasized that although it is planned to provide education only in Estonian from 2024, explanations will still be given in Russian at least for some time in schools.
Center Party MP Andrejs Kante, who is also one of the principals of Tallinn’s Russian-speaking schools, said that Isamaa’s suggestion was incomprehensible.
Kase informed that if the initiative is supported, the names of the schools will have to be changed from the next academic year, that is, already in September of this year. Schools would have enough freedom to decide on the new name themselves.
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