In Estonia, the Ministry of Education and Research plans to make a payment to local governments, which will opt for closing secondary schools with their number of pupils not reaching a hundred, Estonian public broadcasters ERR and ETV report.
In the Baltic country, there are 145 secondary schools and 44 with less than 100, according to the local government cooperation and the school network adviser of the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, Piret Sapp.
«There are three main reasons for why these changes are necessary. One is demographic changes, because high school student numbers will decrease by 2035 and in the long-term compared to today. Not in Estonia as a whole, but in most counties. Another very important reason is for teachers to get an opportunity to work full-time for better pay and for students to be able to study in a suitable environment, where they have enough options,» Sepp explained.
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Meanwhile, there are local municipalities, which have opted for keeping smaller secondary schools. One is the Kanepi municipality, which has has seen its high school student number grow to 66 in the previous years. Given education were to go away from the homeplace, locals would go looking for jobs and lives in other regions, Kanepi municipality mayor Mikk Järv reasoned. The local municipality government of Värksa on the south-east border with Russia has also decided to maintain its secondary school education, as the distance to its closest secondary schools 40 or 50 kilometres, ERR and ETV report.
Estonian local governments to get paid for closing small schools
