Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas confirmed that the government plans to stop funding Russian-language education.
TV3 writes about it.
Parliamentarians asked Kaja Kallas questions about the transition to a single Estonian school. According to them, there are problems in schools with the Estonian language of instruction, which concern, in particular, the fact that children speak other languages. This creates problems for teachers.
As the Prime Minister answered, everyone has the right to learn Estonian, because it is the state language. In addition, the government has no intention of reuniting Estonian children.
"On the contrary, the government plans to stop funding Russian-language education and switch to a unified Estonian-language education," Kaja Kallas said.
When switching to unified education, the childʼs language learning skills should be taken into account when choosing a form of education.
"It is illegal to send a child whose native language is Estonian to a class where education in Estonian is intended for children who do not know this language," the Prime Minister stressed.
And she added that the goal of the transition to a unified Estonian-language education is for all Estonians to be in a single information space and for more and more people to use Estonian.
"So that we donʼt have two different systems, and we are working on it. This was a big deal, as I agree it should have been done a long, long time ago. Better late than never. In any case, we should move in this direction," Kallas summed up.
- As of 2021, 1.331 million people lived in Estonia. About 68% of them speak Estonian, and almost 30% speak Russian. Most Russian-speakers live in the coastal and border areas with Russia.