"Pealtnägija" reported that an NGO was recently set up, which teaching staff who feel they have been bullied can share their experiences.

When September rolls around and the new school year starts, education, taken seriously in Estonia as evidenced by the country's high PISA ranking, comes back in focus.

This can mask some of the underlying tensions and issues, however.

The proportion of workplace bullying complaints which reach the Labor Inspectorate (Tööinspektsioon) is not only notable in the education sector, but the number of complaints is growing.

Riina Tenno is head of the textiles department at the Tallinn Industrial Education Center (TTHK), a vocational school which teaches high school-age students a trade.

Tenno told "Pealtnägija" she had had to take time off in spring, at a doctor's recommendation, after her health broke down.

"Actually, my health broke down this spring and I took time off. The family doctor's urgent recommendation was that I must pull the plug so completely that I don't answer a single call and don't look at a single email, for at least a month," she said.

"Even talking about it now, a lump comes into my throat, actually. I am not that kind of person who cannot pull myself together or calm down. This is not normal," another workplace bullying victim, Kaire Jakobson, told the show.

The stories of Tenno, 66, and Jakobson, 58, may differ in detail, but they speak of the same troubling trend in Estonian schools.

Data available to "Pealtnägija" shows that workplace bullying and long-term conflicts in educational institutions are a much more widespread problem than had so far been publicly acknowledged.

"It is on an upward trend, and schools together with kindergartens stand out there in a very unpleasant way," the inspectorate's director, Kaire Saarep, said.

Having previously worked in senior positions in the clothing industry companies, eight years ago Tenno changed jobs to become head of the textile and commerce field at the Tallinn industrial education center. While the wages were lower than in the private sector, and the working conditions different, Riina said she felt proud that she was contributing to the field of education and the development of young people. For this reason, she turned a blind eye to the idiosyncrasies of that particular school's director.

"It started, for example, with this idea that if your car is not in the parking lot, then you are not at work. I asked where it was written that I must come to work by car. Perhaps I would come to work by bus this week instead. Things reached a level of absurdity where in the morning, I came to the parking lot, took a picture with my phone of my dashboard, with the school building in the background, to prove that I had arrived at work at that time," Tenno recalled.

A former TTHK staff member, Madis Lokotar, shed some light on the individual in question.

"This is a person who can be very diplomatic, very kind and understanding. At another moment, however, the complete opposite – very blunt, raises his voice at subordinates, throws them out of his office, or insults them in other ways," Lokotar, who used to be head of the college's IT teaching department, went on.

In fact, Lokotar, 34, left the school three years ago precisely due to the tense work atmosphere there. He said he saw with his own eyes how several subordinates had fallen into the director's crosshairs.

"These incidents, in order for a problem or major conflict to develop, usually didn't have to be very big. Perhaps someone was late, someone got sick, or maybe someone wrote some letter somewhere that at that moment might have seemed inappropriate to the director," said Lokotar.

The bullying included an exhortation on the part of the director for the staffer to be reduced to tears, Tenno said.

"Once, when the director shouted out a lengthy monologue there, and then one asked, what am I doing wrong or what do you want me to do, in that one situation Mr. Director said to me: 'You know, I would like you to start crying.' I stared him out for a lengthy period of time and said, well, I'm not going to start crying because of that," Tenno said.

That director's name: Paul Alekand, 66, who "Pealtnägija" described as a phenomenon in and of himself. Being head of the same school for a quarter of a century is in itself a remarkable achievement in the Estonian educational landscape, the show said.

This period has included several reforms and school mergers, and Alekand remains apparently vital and charismatic, giving inspiring presentations to young people, and wisecracking at ceremonies.

Alekand himself concedes that he is an emotional person and sometimes may be a bit too short-fused. At the same time, he denies any intentional bullying of his subordinates.

"Everyone interprets raised voices differently. I would not be working as a director and would not have colleagues among whom there are people who have been working with me already for more than 20 years, if I were that kind of person," Alekand said.

Lokotar meanwhile amassed enough anecdotes, either seen first-hand or recounted to him by other people, to form the basis of a 2022 bestselling handbook on management.

Alekand plays a pivotal role in the book, titled "Troppjuht vs tippjuht" (English: "Jerk Boss vs Top Boss").

According to Lokotar, the issues were not just face-to-face rants. "One method was to propagate rumors, which spread throughout the building and could cause conflicts between people. It was assumed that some stories would remain between those people, but they were passed on, perhaps with some variations, and in turn this could cause quarrels between third parties," he said.

Lokotar and Tenno are not the only ones disturbed by the goings on at TTHK.

"Pealtnägija" also spoke to several other current and former school employees. In the case of the latter, several admitted that they left specifically because of the director's inappropriate behavior.

One of the most recent clashes came to an end in spring this year, involving an extracurricular activities leader, while the oldest known case came from 15 years ago. The affected teacher even issued Alekand a written warning back then, but the bullying apparently continued unabated.

Again, he denied he was at fault here. "I cannot possibly be held responsible for the entire 26 years. I am actually a relatively conscientious person, meaning I apologize to people afterwards if I have wronged them and have always tried to resolve matters peacefully," Alekand said.

"Speaking with other colleagues, that is exactly the pattern in that school – people get driven out of their minds, driven into stress, and in the end people leave on their own, as they don't need that situation," Tenno said.

Similar backbiting and overblown conflicts exist in many schools across Estonia, "Pealtnägija" reported, in big city high schools and in junior high schools in the smaller towns alike.

The case involving Jakobson took place at one such school, the ARTE gümnaasium high school in the Mustamäe neighborhood of Tallinn.

Jakobson has been working as an English teacher there, and her case has been the subject of attempted resolution by the Ministry of Education and Research, the Tallinn Education Department and, now, the Labor Inspectorate, for over a year now.

Over 300 pages of materials and evidence have been submitted during that time.

Jakobson explained more. "Most likely what started to bother them was that I thought independently and criticized management, but when constructive proposals get made, in business that is not 'criticism,' but rather the expected opportunity for improvement. However in that school, things didn't work like that."

Without delving into every twist and turn, management accused Jakobson of insubordination, harming the school's reputation, and even insulting and mocking students. Conversely, Jakobson finds that it was she who fell victim to a massive smear campaign by management, which included artificially cooked-up evidence and even pupils at the school being pressured into testifying against her.
At one point things descended into complete absurdity, Jakobson said. She was even reproached for decorating her classroom too much.

"I am that kind of teacher who likes houseplants, which is something that calms me. It was a way to create coziness, to reduce learning stress so that studying could go more smoothly, and those plants were a part of that," she explained.

At the end of January last year, however, controversy erupted after an email reached Jakobson from the director at the time. This stated that a health protection official had visited the school and determined that, given the square meterage of the classroom, Jakobson's furnishings did not meet requirements. For this reason, she was asked to reduce the number of plants in the class by about half. However, Jakobson was skeptical about the authenticity of the claim that a Health Board (Terviseamet) official had inspected the classroom and issued that requirement.

"Why only 50 percent and where does this square meter requirement come from – that is just so curious. I got so upset by this; such an interesting calculation, and so I wanted to see the reasoning behind it. I sent a freedom of information request to the Health Board, asking whether a regular inspection of the rooms had taken place, and whether there is some regulation that stipulates that if a classroom is, for example, 30 square meters, then only one plant is allowed, or if larger, then two," she said. "The answer came back that no inspection had taken place and no such regulation exists," Jakobson added.

In the cases of both institutions, ARTE and TTHK, the temptation might be to call them isolated quarrels involving difficult personalities, as can exist in every area of life.

However, the tales nevertheless seem to represent a broader trend, "Pealtnägija" found, at least in the education sector.

The sheer number of complaints and tips the Labor Inspectorate has received has exploded in recent years, Saarep conceded.

"The number of work disputes is rising in the case of teachers. They stand out in terms of tip-offs, and teachers write us quite a lot of tip-offs. They may already be working, or they may be former teachers who only dare to write after they have left. You could call it a bad trend," Saarep said.

Last year, the inspectorate registered nearly 800 tip-offs on workplace violations across all fields, and of those, about one in five related to educational institutions – from kindergartens to high schools to colleges. However, Saarep suspects that the figures are just the tip of the iceberg.

"When I myself have spoken with teachers, not only teachers but workplace bullying victims in general, they feel they are in such a helpless situation that they say they cannot go anywhere else. They in themselves feel they cannot, as this is their job, their income, and nowhere else will take them on," she said.
Notably some of the complainants referred to in the report are not at the start of their working lives. "Perhaps their age is such that they are a couple of years off retirement, and those teachers mostly do not venture to change jobs. Learning something new is difficult, meaning they feel they are in such a helpless situation and do not dare to take that step," explained Saarep.

While every case is different and does not always come down to workplace bullying, the overall statistics held by the labor dispute committee chart a worrying trend.

Whereas just a few years ago it was quite common for a few dozen appeals a year to come from educational institutions, last year there were 36 from kindergartens alone, and nearly 100 from schools. In other words, in four years the number of disputes had tripled.

Maie (name changed) was another teacher whose experiences "Pealtnägija" reported. "The director started belittling me in the presence of another colleague. For example: Soon we have the Mihklipäev (Michaelmas, September 29 – ed.) fayre, so what have you done for that? How many sellers will you get? Soon it is Teacher's Day. What have you thought to do for the teachers? We are heading towards catastrophe. Where has your creativity gone? Or did you never have any? Such a direct attack on my person was especially humiliating and unacceptable," Maie explained.

The Labor Inspectorate shared with "Pealtnägija" other anonymous examples of the most striking stories from recent years. The main underlying causes of disputes also emerged from this.

Siiri (name changed) wrote: "I have received attacking and directly disparaging phone calls, also in the evenings – emails and messages, where in one demands get made and distrust is expressed, then in another, it is stated that doing unpaid work is normal, so take it or leave it. I have informed the boss in writing that I do not consider disparaging behavior appropriate."

Saarep outlined some other patterns. "For example, teachers are presented with proposals to alter their employment contract, as this year there are fewer students, we changed the structure, or some classes are reduced, or increased."

Since in and of itself this could be a totally normal organizational process in any school, Saarep went on, it "may be bullying, it may not be bullying."

"Another is work organization in general – if, for example, parents somehow bully or submit complaints, then how do these get resolved, and we have many examples where they are not resolved. We have another set of examples where teachers have actively turned to the municipal or city government, but no response has come back from there. Then there are such completely deliberately malicious, crude, and nasty activities, where truly the chair is pulled out from under someone. Also types of slightly more concealed activities," she went on, including favoritism in this.

Sometimes the actual concealing of items, as a form of gaslighting, has been reported.

"Things get taken away, supposedly hidden. Later then mockery – 'how did you not know, are you blind'," Saarep recounted.

Another, Tiiu, wrote: "I tried to defend myself and explain things, but he demanded that I listen to him, because that is also my duty as a subordinate, and that he must behave authoritatively towards me and put me in my place by 'scolding' me on the phone. I started crying and ended the call."

Because the cases are complicated, the victims sometimes lack evidence, and the hallmarks of workplace bullying are undefined in law, the director general of the Labor Inspectorate admits that often the truth remains unexplained right to the end.

Out of 27 workplace bullying appeals made to the inspectorate last year, that workplace bullying had happened was established in only two of them.

Solving things on a case-by-case basis, while often held up as a best practice, comes with its downsides too.

"The difficulty with this whole matter is that they always come as individual cases, making it easier to dismiss them – there was one case, we solved it, and things are smoothed over once again. Then comes another new individual case, it gets solved, and again the ground is smooth. No one has ever understood that they just keep coming and coming, so there are actually many of them altogether," Jakobson said.

Jakobson herself recently changed jobs, though still in education, and started the new school year at a state high school (Riigigümnaasium) in Harju County. At the same time, she is still engaged in an exhausting dispute with lawyers hired by her previous employer.

Even this, in her opinion, is a separate type of bullying.

Jakobson decided to set up her own organization, together with six like-minded people who found themselves in a similar situation. The resulting body, MTÜ Hariduskius, aims to provide both legal advice and emotional support to those who need it.

"This is a kind of collective cry for help to the public, because what else is left to do?" Jakobson said.

Riina Tenno meanwhile is continuing in her current position at TTHK, despite the director's apparent passive-aggressiveness and professional put-downs of her, "Pealtnägija" reported.

Alekand for his part sees things the other way round: The entire raising of the issue is the result of a malicious ganging-up on the part of his subordinates, he says.

"I cannot answer you why they are saying these things. I perhaps do not myself sense that they are dissatisfied, but I can tell you this: If my departure would make anything better, then I can leave from here" was his Parthian shot.

The director of ARTE high school was unable to provide comment to "Pealtnägija", stating they are newly in office and noting that the labor dispute proceedings are ongoing.

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