Estonia's education agreement is intended to regulate teachers' salaries, workloads as well as working conditions. To date, those that have signed the agreement include representatives of teachers, school administrations as well as private schools. Local governments have until the beginning of next week to join the agreement, but to date, just nine of the country's 79 local governments have expressed their intent to do so.

"When it comes to local governments, it is indeed an issue that the majority of them are not prepared to sign [the agreement] today, because their concerns are primarily related to the financial expenditures the agreement would impose on them," said Minister of Education and Research Kristina Kallas (Eesti 200).

The City of Maardu is one such local government. Maardu City Council decided to opt out of signing the agreement, citing the absence of financial guarantees from the state as a key reason for doing so.

"Where is the money for hiring teaching assistants for when there are more than 24 students in a class, for example?" asked Maardu Mayor Aurika Sin-Kerra.

"There's also the issue with the career model – it's a bit limiting for our young teachers, who only just started teaching and they don't attain the level of master teachers," she continued. "And then the question arises – can the school principal pay them more or not? That isn't clear for local governments at the moment. And then, of course, there's the teacher shortage. In reality, the education agreement does not guarantee that we will end up with more teachers."

The education agreement stipulates a 4 percentage point increase in teachers' payroll funding over the next three years. According to the minister, this definitely has to happen. Nonetheless, there is currently no money for it in Estonia's state budget strategy.

She acknowledged that various local governments face vastly differing challenges when it comes to creating teaching positions.

"There are local governments for whom the issue lies with their school system – meaning that the school system eats up a lot of their general education funding," Kallas explained. "Other local governments are indeed struggling with the fact that the current funding model doesn't favor growing areas where student numbers are on the rise. Since we weren't even able to come close to an agreement on changes to the funding model during education agreement talks, we're now initiating these discussions with local governments separately."

Tallinn Deputy Mayor and Eesti 200 party mate Aleksei Jašin has proposed joining the education agreement. He noted that the Estonian capital city's financial situation is more stable than that of other local governments, leaving more room to maneuver for additional activities.

However, no consensus exists on the matter within the city's ruling coalition.

"I don't see an issue in the big picture, but let's just say we've had political discussions," Jašin said. "This is more of a political moment – the government's idea or education minister's idea – but I don't think it's worth letting a good thing go by because of that."

According to the deputy mayor, Tallinn is already planning on taking certain steps outlined in the education agreement anyway.

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