At the end of the school year, a quality monitoring assessment was carried out among first- and fourth-grade students in Tallinn whose native language is not Estonian.

The results showed that two-thirds of fourth-grade students did not pass the test, meaning they had not reached the required level of Estonian.

Tallinn Deputy Mayor Aleksei Jašin (Eesti 200) said responsibility for the situation lies with those who previously led education policy in the capital.

Since the students had studied in Russian for the past three years, it is unrealistic to expect them to achieve a high level of Estonian in just one transition year, he told Saturday's "Aktuaalne kaamera."

"This is the result of 10–20 years of education policy in Tallinn. Responsibility must be sought from those who have guided this situation until now. The question now is whether there are enough teachers who are proficient in Estonian and the necessary teaching methods. We will ensure that by September there will be Estonian-speaking teachers in every classroom in Tallinn. The biggest methodological challenge is figuring out how to move forward from here," Jašin said.

Andrei Kante, principal of Tallinn Tõnismäe High School, said their pupils achieved good results, averaging 42 out of 55 points. However, he believes the transition in fourth grade was poorly implemented.

Kante said it would have been more beneficial to base the transition on the principles of the previous immersion program.

"It would have been possible to gradually shift these classes to Estonian-language instruction. That would be much more sustainable both in terms of teacher resources and student motivation. But that proposal was not heeded. And the suggestion also came from certain experts in the field of language immersion. Politicians simply decided to go ahead with first and fourth grades. And as predicted, everything is more or less fine in the first grades, but in the fourth grades, things went — as expected — poorly," Kante told the show.

'Too early" to assess results

Ingar Dubolazov, the Ministry of Education and Research's director of the transition to Estonian-language instruction, said it is currently too early to assess the transition.

National monitoring takes place every three years, and the expected learning outcomes are also distributed over three years.

"To make a judgment at the end of fourth grade about children who have studied in Estonian for just one year — that it's a failure — I think that's unfair. Unfair to both teachers and children. These children need time, and teachers certainly need time to adjust to the new situation," Dubolazov said.

"Nationally, we will test them at the beginning of seventh grade to evaluate the results based on material learned in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. I cannot agree with the characterization of this as a catastrophe, without the transition to Estonian-language instruction, the results would be even worse," he added.

Jašin said that during the summer, the education department and city government will develop an additional action plan to support both students entering fourth grade in the new academic year and those beginning fifth grade.

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