Why is less Russian being taught at Estonian schools?

DW (English)

Estonia's large Russian-speaking minority used to be taught in the Russian language. But after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the government introduced a reform to bring this to an end. Now, lessons will only be taught in Estonian.

Transcript

00:00Victoria Boushinskaya sings in Estonian as best she can.

00:07The second grader belongs to Estonia's Russian-speaking minority.

00:16At Matra Comprehensive School in Tallinn, Victoria and her classmates learn all subjects

00:21in Estonian.

00:22Maths, too.

00:23Read, please.

00:24Six plus b equals ten.

00:38Think about what number you need to add to six to get ten as the answer.

00:49Good.

00:51Writing isn't difficult for me either.

00:57That's not a given, because Victoria only started learning Estonian at school.

01:05About 300,000 people in Estonia speak Russian as their mother tongue, a quarter of the population.

01:11A legacy of the Soviet Union, from which the Baltic state declared its independence in

01:161991.

01:18Estonian is most widely spoken in the capital Tallinn and in Narva, in the east on the border

01:23with Russia.

01:24Here, there's only a narrow river separating NATO and EU member Estonia from its giant

01:30neighbor.

01:34Until last year, Russian-speaking children in Estonia had their own schools and were

01:38taught in Russian.

01:40This is now a thing of the past.

01:42It's a reform that began more than 30 years ago, but was never consistently implemented.

01:49The government lacked the political will and was afraid of alienating Russian-speaking

01:54voters.

01:57One reason was that Russia intervened very actively on the issue.

02:03Every year it was declared a geopolitical issue.

02:07That could have destabilized Estonia considerably, which is why the reform was approached very

02:14cautiously.

02:21After the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Estonian government decided to ban Russian from schools

02:26and daycare centers in protest against the war.

02:30What seemed politically logical, however, proved difficult to implement.

02:35Most Russian-speaking children live largely isolated in prefabricated housing estates,

02:40such as Lasname, in the northeast of Tallinn.

02:44Almost everyone here can only speak Russian.

02:48Victoria is lucky that her mother understands Estonian.

02:51Yulia Bushinskaya is a sales assistant in an Estonian store.

02:56She can help Victoria with her homework, but that's the exception.

03:03Three children from our circle of friends are Victoria's age.

03:06One girl is two years older and in fourth grade.

03:09She has it hard.

03:11It's difficult for a lot of children because their parents can't help them with the language.

03:18Sometimes they ask me to translate their homework.

03:23We try to help each other as much as we can.

03:29There's no way around it because the education level is high.

03:34According to PISA studies, Estonian pupils are among the smartest in Europe.

03:38Globally, they rank fourth in math, just behind Singapore, Japan and South Korea.

03:44They also score highly in reading and science, but not all of them.

03:50Pupils' performance varies.

03:52The school and language reform wants to redress the situation.

03:58The level of education varies greatly in Estonia, between the rural schools on the

04:03one hand, the urban schools, and then the Russian-speaking schools.

04:12According to the latest PISA results, young people whose native language is Russian are

04:18well behind their Estonian-speaking peers.

04:24Our goal is to overcome this.

04:32Eight-year-old Viktoria comes from the Russian-speaking Tallinn district of Lasname, but she would

04:37like to study at an Estonian university one day.

04:40The school reform will help her to achieve this, she says.

04:47I'm spending most of my time learning Estonian.

04:51Viktoria enjoys it, and she knows she still has a lot to learn.

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