High schools struggling with ban on excluding students
Schools have said an education ministry bar on excluding high school students came as an unexpected surprise to them. They say they are struggling to implement the new rules.
Since the start of the 2025-2026 academic year, education in Estonia has been compulsory through to age 18. This means high schools and vocational schools can no longer exclude students from enrolling or expel them, even if the student does not meet conditions set by the school.
Some school leaders say more time is needed to get the documentation in order, to properly implement the new rules.
From September, high schools have only been able to exclude a minor from the list if that young person has submitted an application to do so.
Karmen Paul, the head of the Viimis gümnaasium High School just outside Tallinn, said: "Most of the schools that set additional conditions did so such that the student had to pass at least 50 percent of their courses, which in a broader sense is a grade of three (out of five – ed.). However, now the fact that we can no longer use that for students under the age of 18, for example, to ensure quality, prevent learning gaps, ensure learning opportunities after upper secondary school — this was one point which surprised me."
Paul added that schools do believe that student numbers need to be supported, but this change may start to affect the number of places available to pupils, and will also impact on teacher workload.
Since the change came as a surprise for many schools, their principals expect the ministry to give more time than before so that the changed situation can also be discussed with students, parents and teachers.
"These are fundamental questions about how we assess things, how we provide feedback, as it also concerns follow-ups and everything else. This also means opening up the curriculum. It came so unexpectedly that today we have to start changing processes and principles in the middle of the school year," Paul went on.
Marjeta Venno, head of the curriculum area at the Ministry of Education and Research, said the aim with the change had been to standardize practices, in the interests of young people.
"Each school has set up these different clauses or clauses in different ways, and they really can't be there anymore. We started to hear stories about situations where this kind of exclusion policy in each school became differentiated, and some sagas seemed to be not very supportive of young people. At times, it seemed that a young person's right to study was actually being harmed," she told "Aktuaalne kaamera."
The schools had enough time to discuss the substance of the amendments, given the Riigikogu passed them a year ago. The amendments entered into force nine months later, ie. in September, Venno added.
It may have been that the bar on excluding students was lost in the rule change which happened at the same time, that education should be mandatory up to age 18, Venno went on. But in any case rules are rules.
"We tried to communicate all this in relation to the obligation to study, as it was a law passed at the same time, but it is likely that both communication and the reception of information were somehow overshadowed by the change in the obligation to study. Nothing will happen if this document, whose order we now assume, gets fixed tomorrow instead of yesterday. The main thing is that everyone understands its content and makes an effort to fix it," she went on.
Once a student reaches the age of 18, they can still be excluded in any case, though the ministry is preparing a bill to eliminate this discrepancy as well, Venno noted.
"We really want to move in the direction that these exclusions can only be made according to the Basic Schools and Upper Secondary Schools Act. Unfortunately, I think that a school will probably not have any scope to set its own points at all in the future," Venno said.
The extension of compulsory education until age 18 was introduced to curb high dropout rates, particularly during the first year of upper secondary and vocational education, when students are typically aged 16–17.
Under the new rules, students may not leave education without having a new study place arranged, whether at another school or within a different track or specialty at the same institution.
The Ministry of Education and Research has said the change is intended to ensure continuity in learning and prevent young people from dropping out of the education system altogether, while maintaining overall education quality.
Prior to the law change, education in Estonia had only been mandatory up to the end of Basic School (Põhikool), when a student will be aged around 16.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Aleksander Krjukov
