Ministry to Pick Up the Tab for School Specialists
The Ministry of Education will this year take over from local municipalities the responsibility of paying salaries to psychologists, speech therapists and other non-teacher specialists at schools.
The ministry decided last year that the teachers' pay fund can no longer be tapped by municipal governments to pay other specialists as of 2013, ERR radio reported.
But municipalities protested saying they would not have enough funds to keep non-teacher specialists on payroll.
Tartu said it would have had to fork out an additional 700,000 euros and Tallinn three times more.
The ministry said it would make a one-off funding pledge, setting aside 3.38 million euros for 2013, but said the matter will have to be settled in Parliament.
"No one-off solution is great and to our knowledge, an amendment proposal to the Basic Schools and Upper Secondary Schools Act currently in Parliament deals with possible solutions to the question of financing support staff," said Jüri Võigemast, director of the bureau at the Association of Estonian Cities.
He added that the state should pick up the bill, not municipalities, as access to the service would otherwise depend on the means of the local municipality.