This year, Hugo Treffner, Miina Härma, Jaan Poska, Kristjan Jaak Peterson and Tamme high schools in Tartu held joint entrance exams, coordinated by Hugo Treffner High School.

According to Ott Ojaveer, principal of Hugo Treffner High School, 2,131 students registered for the exams. However, Ojaveer noted this number does not reflect the full picture, as typically 5–8 percent of registered students do not participate.

"This year there was less so-called 'education tourism' at the Tartu joint exams, since exams were held at several Tallinn schools at the same time, which reduced the number of such applicants," Ojaveer said.

At the same time, Ojaveer noted it is not possible to say how many students were invited to interviews, because the five schools jointly decided not to hold interviews this year.

According to the principal, the reason lies in problems with the Ministry of Education's admissions information system (SAIS). At the beginning of the year, all admission processes were supposed to take place through SAIS, but by the end of February it became clear the platform would not be usable.

As a result, the Tartu schools had to move their admissions back to the sisseastumine.ee portal. Under SAIS parameters, entrance interviews would have had to be graded on a 100-point scale. Since this would have made evaluation very difficult due to the subjective nature of interviews, school leaders in Tartu decided to cancel them altogether.

"We have other things to do at school besides constantly reacting to extremely rapid [education system] changes," Ojaveer said.

Hugo Treffner High School will admit five parallel classes this year, for a total of 180 new students. Admission results for the five-school joint exams will be announced on June 9.

Entrance exams of four Tallinn schools

At the joint exams of Gustav Adolf High School (GAG), Tallinn School No. 21, Tallinn English College and Tallinn Secondary Science School, 2,471 students participated this year — a new record.

Although these four Tallinn schools also followed SAIS parameters, meaning interviews must be graded on a 100-point scale, Jüri Käosaar, principal of GAG, said this did not cause problems in Tallinn as it did in Tartu.

"We already have an evaluation matrix in place from previous years, so it did not create major issues for us," Käosaar said, adding there has still been more confusion and last-minute reshuffling from the ministry than there should have been.

In particular, Käosaar noted because of repeated changes in the decision to use SAIS, about two weeks of work by some school staff was effectively wasted.

 According to Käosaar, the Tallinn exams do not require schools to rank each other's applicants.

"Students could indicate up to four schools when registering and choose a preferred interview time window. This was done to ensure the same student would not be scheduled for interviews at different schools on the same day," he explained.

This year, GAG invited 538 students to interviews and will admit 144.

Strong competition also at vocational schools

According to Rain Jõks, director of Tartu Vocational College (VOCO), nearly 2,500 students applied this year.

"There were about 5–10 percent more applicants this year. That said, there are also more study places available," Jõks said, adding on average there were about 2.5 applicants per spot.

While the high number of applicants is partly due to a large cohort of basic school graduates, Jõks believes it also reflects a growing appreciation among young people for vocational education.

Competition at VOCO was highest in beauty and wellness services, where 381 students applied for 52 spots — slightly more than 7.3 applications per place.

Jõks also expressed satisfaction that engineering programs have become more popular, receiving more applications than in previous years.

This school year, there are 15,874 students in 9th grade in Estonia.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and X and never miss an update!