Last week, the Tallinn City Council decided that starting this fall, the city government will oversee decisions on increasing the maximum number of students in first-grade classes. In other words, it will ensure that the number of students does not exceed the legal limit of 24 per class. The city's education department will retain decision-making authority for other grade levels.

The change has drawn criticism, including from Tallinn school principals, who say they lack both the funding and teachers needed to open additional classes.

According to Mayor Jevgeni Ossinovski (SDE), the decision was necessary because there has been no investment in the capital's education network over the past decade, while the number of students has increased by 7,000 in that time. As a result, more than 700 classes exceed the legal limit of 24 students.

"We will start addressing this issue gradually. Beginning this year, we will ensure that first-grade classes do not exceed 24 students. There may be a few rare exceptions, such as when a student has to repeat a grade, but those will be extremely uncommon. The reason we want to make this a legally binding decision at a higher level is that the same decision-making body responsible for budgeting, new school investments and school expansions should also oversee class sizes," Ossinovski explained.

The mayor added that, unlike the city government, the education department is unable to resolve this issue. When there are more students than available school places, the department has no choice but to ask schools to apply for class size increases to accommodate all students.

"I believe the city government is in a better position to uphold this principle than the head of the education department, who has the immediate responsibility of placing students. It makes sense for the city government to make this decision and take public political responsibility for it," Ossinovski said.

Change to cost Tallinn half a million euros

On Tuesday, Ossinovski also met with Tallinn school principals, who expressed concerns primarily about the funding model, as they were under the impression that they would have to open new classes using their own budgets.

"It must be acknowledged that communication on this issue could have been better, as school principals felt they were responsible for structuring classes under the new system — for example, having to create three classes instead of two without sufficient funding. A large part of these concerns actually relates to the funding model," Ossinovski said, adding that practical challenges should not prevent the achievement of this important goal.

"We assured them that the primary responsibility lies with the education department, not school principals. We will definitely take on the logistical aspects of this issue," he said.

According to the mayor, more teachers, classrooms and funding are needed, and resources have already been allocated in the city budget. "This also means hiring additional teachers to staff the new classes and we have accounted for that," he stated.

Ossinovski noted that the shortage of first-grade teachers is somewhat less severe. "In any case, we plan to recruit additional teachers and allocate extra funds to schools for this purpose," he said.

The city has currently budgeted approximately half a million euros for implementing these changes.

"The exact amount depends on how many additional classes we need to open. If the distribution were perfect, there would be six or seven new classes citywide, but realistically, we are looking at around ten. So overall, this is neither an excessively expensive nor an unmanageable task, especially if we implement it gradually," Ossinovski explained.

He acknowledged that the changes would require adjustments in administrative practices and could cause some inconvenience.

"But we need to understand why we are doing this — Tallinn's education system has been mismanaged. We have saved money at the expense of students' and teachers' well-being and that is not acceptable. We are ensuring that class sizes are normal so that both students and teachers have a good working environment, ultimately improving the quality of education in Tallinn," Ossinovski said.

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