Estonia's education deal proposals: Teacher career stages model, pay grades

Among initial proposals floated by three working groups for Estonia's education agreement are a four-stage career model and corresponding pay grades, a teacher-student ratio as well as a new funding model for schools under which all education subsidies are transferred to the country's local governments.
The Ministry of Education and Research (HTM) on Tuesday sent to its partners the provisional principles that had been proposed by three working groups on the long-term education agreement in the making.
Speaking with ERR, Minister of Education and Research Kristina Kallas (Eesti 200) stressed that these are preliminary and ideal, so to speak, ideas, which involved parties will start to discuss next week.
The first working group proposed a four-stage career model and corresponding pay grades for teachers. Under the system proposed by this working group, junior teachers would have a salary weighing coefficient of 0.9, teachers 1.0, senior teachers 1.4 and master teachers 1.6.
According to Kallas, this career model could be implemented now already, and regardless of what teachers' minimum wage ends up being negotiated to be.
Currently, the minimum gross monthly wage for teachers in Estonia is €1,820, corresponding to the second, teacher stage of the proposed new model. Should this model be implemented in 2025, however, Kallas says that this €1,820 minimum wage would likely be applied to junior teachers, and wages for the next stage, the teacher stage, would be 10 percent higher.
Workload calculations would also include student numbers, i.e. how local governments calculate the number of teacher positions. Proposed ratios included 12 students per teacher in 1st through 6th grades, 11 students per teacher in 7th through 9th grades and 15 students per teacher at the high school level, i.e. 10th through 12th grades.
Class size would remain at 24 students, but if some local governments should enroll more students per class, under this proposal, they would be required to hire a second or assistant teacher as well. This chiefly concerns the City of Tallinn, where class sizes often exceed 24, resulting in high teacher workloads.
According to the education minister, workload calculations have also been proposed to consider a teacher's workload to be 21 teaching hours a week, a figure that would apply to municipal, private and state schools alike.
Consolidating subsidies, schools
A third major theme was the matter of the funding model – that is, how to finance local governments. This working group, which according to Kallas was led by Hando Sutter, proposed consolidating all education subsidies and handing them over to local governments, which would then use this funding to pay teachers' wages and other education expenses.
Likewise outlined in the education agreement are principles for the restructuring of Estonia's school network. According to these principles, grades 1-6 would remain local, however the third stage, or grades 7-9, would be consolidated into bigger population centers.
Likewise, plans call for just 100 high schools, both municipal and state, to remain by the year 2035, meaning that within ten years' time, 50 of Estonia's current high schools should be merged or closed.
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Editor: Urmet Kook, Huko Aaspõllu, Aili Vahtla