Secondary school pupils in Estonia have the option of taking either the national English language exam or the Cambridge C1 (CAE) exam in its place. The CAE test can also be taken in the 11th grade, a year before graduation.

However, Postimees, which publishes school league tables, does not take into account exams taken a year earlier when compiling its school league table. This is because the Education and Youth Board's (Harno) statistics portal displays exam results for specific school years, not for individual pupils.

"In the Estonian education information portal (Haridussilm), we see the information on exam results in a single school for one academic year – that is, the aggregated view includes all English C1 exam takers, regardless of whether they are in 11th grade or their final year that school," said Merit Kangro, head of analysis at the Harno Center for Examinations and Studies.

"With the help of the portal, you can exclude 11th graders from the C1 exam results, but you cannot include the data of students who took the exam a year earlier in their results for that year of their schooling," she said.

Kangro said this could affect the quality of the school league tables: "In the context of graduates in a particular year, the rankings may not be correct."

The portal also does not display data if there are fewer than five graduating students at a particular school. This could have a particular impact on the positions in the table of small schools.

Postimees: League table not flawed

Aarne Seppel, the compiler of the Postimees school league table, told ERR that if Harno were to provide him with more accurate data on English exams, he would certainly use it.

He said Postimees' rankings are not flawed as they use the results of exams taken at the same school.

"I take into account the results of exams taken in a given academic year. I don't know whether they were taken in grade 11 or whether some particularly talented students took the C1 exam in grade 10," Seppel said.

He plans to continue producing school league tables based on the data from the education portal.

Principal: As a mathematician, I don't understand the formula

However, there are schools whose reputations, or place in the rankings, have been negatively impacted by the way English exam results are counted. 

Although Nõo High School was ranked second in Estonia after Tallinn Secondary School in terms of math exam results, the school as a whole was only 17th in the rankings. The reason for this was a mediocre result in the English exam – only 28.9 points.

"Our students did not take the C1 level English exams in 2024, but took them in spring 2023, when they were in grade 11. If Postimees had wanted to produce suitable rankings, it would have had to use the data of the 11th grade students from the C1 language exam in the 2022/2023 school year in order to evaluate Nõo Gymnasium," said Jaanus Järveoja, principal of Nõo High School.

Commenting on the poor results in the national English exam, the director said it is only taken by slightly weaker students because there is a preliminary before the C1 exam that has to be passed first. Those who are able to do so, take the C1 exam instead- "Out of 90 students, 75 will take the C1 exam," said Järveoja.

Järveoja added that he is a mathematician but does not understand the formula used by Postimees, which compares the scales of the Cambridge test and the national English exam.

"Any math person will understand that you can't put that kind of thing into a table," Järveoja said, criticizing the fact that the table does not compare the results of the English exam across graduates from different schools.

Järveoja said that since the publication of the rankings, he has had a hard time explaining to the alumni and teachers of Nõo Real Gymnasium why the school's position has dropped. "However, we had a very strong class. If only the results in Estonian and math had been taken into account, we would have been second in the rankings," Järveoja said.

"I believe that it is not sensible to publish these kinds of rankings, and not only because of what our school has been through. If it is possible to compare the data for things like Estonian language and mathematics, then please go ahead," Järveoja said.

According to the Postimees school rankings, Tallinn Secondary School is in first place, Tallinn English College in second and Gustav Adolf Gymnasium in third.

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