Estonia are the new Hooky World Champions!

Continuing the trend of vaguely linked posts, today's Eesti Päevaleht highlights the results of a UNICEF report issued late last week which reveal that Estonia leads the world in high school truancy.

Specifically, as many as 45% of students in Year 8 maths classes are skipping class. Or at least they were in 2003, which is when the figures date from (and which begs the question: why did it take them four years to write the report?).

Of course, officials are scoffing at the numbers being thrown about. Someone from the Ministry of Education the paper managed to get hold of claimed that the figures in the UNICEF report were not based on any statistical data, only to admit that that's because no such data exists. At least, not in the MoE.

School principals are also frowning upon the report's findings, stressing that the 10% of students who are dropping out of school altogether is a much bigger problem, and pointing out that while there is a problem with truancy, it is 'no worse than about 1 in 5'.

Even that says something though, I would have thought. I can't say I blame the kids myself, really, if Year 8 maths here is anything like Year 8 maths was when I was at school, and given the numbingly rigid structure of the education system in this country. If they had more say in what they learn, perhaps they would be more inclined to stick with it.

http://www.epl.ee/uudised/401257

That'll teach 'em

Just weeks before the start of the new academic year, it has been revealed that hundreds of teaching positions throughout Estonia remain to be filled, with some local governments having yet to even place advertisements for them.

In Tallinn alone, students will arrive on their first day to more than 60 teacherless classes unless there is a dramatic last-minute rush of takers for the underpaid and undervalued positions. The Ministry of Education and Research have been forced into the rather pathetic admission - given the tasks they are charged with - that they are not even sure how many teachers they will be short come September 1st. Presumably they will find out when students start wandering corridors up and down the country in search of an educator.

In all fairness, the Ministry is caught between a rock and an entire range of hard places. The average age of serving teachers in the country is rapidly approaching 912, and as they die or are pensioned off, there is no next generation to replace them: anyone graduating in modern, go-get-'em Estonia inevitably goes on to study business administration, IT or something that will get them to Brussels, with tertiary education producing about 3 new teachers annually.

Not that you can blame the youngsters when there is no financial incentive to go into teaching, no fringe benefits and only rooms bursting at the seams with obnoxious pre-teens and teenagers to look forward to. If the government made the prospect of teaching more attractive, a few more people might give it a go. Alas, it's a vicious circle: the government doesn't have enough money to provide the incentives the profession needs if it's not to go into terminal meltdown within the next few years. Allegedly.

It's a perfectly fixable situation, of course, if someone takes the initiative, and as a former teacher myself I can vouch for how satisfying and enjoyable (if not exactly lucrative) a job teaching can be. But the role of educators is rarely shown the respect it deserves, anywhere. If nothing else, Estonia can take heart from the fact that it's probably not alone in having an education system facing imminent implosion.