Employers' Rep Blames Politicians for Education System Woes
Years of political inaction in the education arena are to blame for today's shortages of skilled labor and inefficient school system, Employers Confederation Chairman Enn Veskimägi has said.
Speaking at an education development conference in Tallinn yesterday, Veskimägi said that the declining number of school-aged children in Estonia was a phenomenon that had been known for a long time, but that much-discussed reforms to address the issue had never been carried out.
To highlight the results of the problem, he cited the example of a rural municipal school that has 20 students and 57 people involved in educating them. "And there are more than a dozen such cases," he said.
"Reforms in Estonia come later rather than sooner. When the shoe is too tight, we shut our eyes and we start reforms only when we are no longer able to walk," he said.
Veskimägi pointed out that business leaders' biggest concern is the nation's shortage of skilled labor, a problem exacerbated by the high number of high school graduates planning to attend universities rather than enter the workforce or receive a vocational education, uudised.err.ee reported.
According to Veskimägi, more foreign investment takes place in countries where a high proportion of the population has a professional education. He went on to say that Estonia's non-selective higher education system is effectively "a continuation of childhood."
Steve Roman