Power to the principals

It's been a day for school-related news. At the annual conference of the Association of Estonian School Principals, Minister for Education Tõnis Lukas has confirmed his intention to submit a proposal to local governments to provide principals with greater powers of reprimand.

“That way they could decide for themselves on the spot whether to issue the likes of a verbal warning or a fine to students or anyone else who happens to misbehave on school premises,” the minister said. “This will undoubtedly help to rein in students who act out, use foul language, deliberately provoke teachers and other students or smoke on school grounds.”

Why do I not share his conviction?

School ≠ holidays

School principals the length and breadth of Tartu (the 'City of Good Thoughts') have been whinging to Delfi that they'd had it up to here with their students bunking off to go on package holidays with their families.

Hugo Treffner High School, one of the most prestigious in the education capital of the country, has published a plee to parents on its website to no longer withdraw the fruit of their loins from classes for the purpose of frivolous travel. "There's a time and a place for holidays from school," said principal Ott Ojaveer, "and that's school holidays. The rate of absenteeism has gone through the roof."

The frustrated principal complains that parents seeking permission for their children to play hooky and skip the country means extra work for teachers and administrative staff. As things stand, schools have no right to refuse such permission and are left in the impotent position of merely being able to suggest that it might not be such a great idea.

The board of Miina Härma High School are facing the same problem. Stand-in principal Heikki Veinimäe* says a lot of travel agencies offer discount package tours during the off season which families latch onto. The only solution he foresees is the implementation of national regulations. "If the number of holidays being taken continues to increase, as well as the length of time these kids are out of school, we'll have to take the matter in hand," he said.

* what's the betting the real principal was on holiday?

Where there's smoke...

I came across a news item on Delfi today that I actually thought must have been a joke. Rather pathetically, it was in earnest.

Tomorrow sees the launch in schools throughout Estonia of the 6th annual Smoke-Free Class competition, in which students and teachers are required to give up smoking for a period of six months in order to be in the running for an all-expenses paid class trip abroad. All very laudable, you might be thinking, as was I at first - until I read that the competition is aimed at students as young as 11.

Now I may be naive, but how many chain-smoking Year 4 students do you know? Health experts claim that there is a serious problem in Estonia with underage tobacco [ab]use, and I can believe it, or at least would if such campaigns were aimed at those, say, 15 and up. But to include those barely into double figures seems a bit over the top for a project that is more cure than prevention. Teachers have expressed their own doubts, concerned that the competition may have the opposite effect to that intended among younger students: arousing their interesting in smoking rather than nipping it in the bud.

Whether or not I am naive, I am definitely a cynic, and had to laugh at the fact that the competition is based entirely on a trust system where participating students sign a class contract promising not to smoke at all during the six-month period. I mean by and large we're talking about teenage boys and girls at their most pliable and irritatingly insubordinate to whom responsibility and maturity are foreign concepts. Entrusting them with anything is risible.

Moreover, where does the lucky class get a free trip to at the end of it all? Amsterdam. Can no one see the irony here? It would be like running an Alcohol-Free Class competition and sending the winners to Oktoberfest.