Last March, Toila Municipal Council voted to shut down the high school grade levels — grades 10 through 12 — at Toila High School. This spring, Tartu Administrative Court upheld the decision, rejecting an appeal filed by 25 parents of the school's students.

The parents who took Toila Municipality to court had emphasized that cutting grades 10-12 at Toila High School would mean the loss of the last Estonian-language high school in Ida-Viru County.

The judge who heard the case, however, noted that there are plenty of native Estonian-speaking students at Kohtla-Järve High School, pointing out that the majority of students there take the Estonian state exam for native speakers, not the Estonian as a second language exam.

The 25 parents appealing the closure drew attention to legal acts requiring local governments and the state to ensure access to an Estonian-language learning environment. According to their lawyers, the court did not address this issue raised by their clients in depth.

"The court based its decision on the fact that Kohtla-Järve High School, which is offered as an alternative to Toila High School students, has a sufficient number of native Estonian-speaking students," wrote RASK law firm's Villy Lopman and Elvi Tuisk, the lawyers representing the parents in the case.

Judge Maria Lõbus of the Tartu Administrative Court's Jõhvi Courthouse, who rejected the parents' appeal, analyzed the number of students taking the Estonian language state exam at three regional state schools: Sillamäe High School, Jõhvi High School and Kohtla-Järve High School.

In her decision, the judge specifically mentioned Kohtla-Järve High School as the alternative for Toila students, noting that, in spring 2023, more students at the Kohtla-Järve school took the Estonian state exam for native speakers than the exam for Estonian as a second language.

In spring 2023, 23 students at Kohtla-Järve High School took the Estonian state exam for native speakers, while 13 took the Estonian as a second language exam. By comparison, 39 students at Jõhvi High School took the native speakers exam, and 88 took the second language exam, while at Sillamäe High School, zero students took the native speakers exam, and 90 took the second language exam.  

For the judge, it was also important to note that, over the three years she reviewed, the Estonian language situation in Kohtla-Järve had continued to improve. In 2021, just 19 students took the Estonian state exam for native speakers, while 37 took the exam for Estonian as a second language. By 2022, those figures had improved to 22 and 30, respectively.

Considering the above, the judge determined that the complainants' children have the opportunity to attend a high school relatively close to home at which the share of students whose native language isn't Estonia is rather small, the court said.

Kohtla-Järve High School has not conducted any surveys regarding the languages its students speak at home. The school's education and development director, Mailen Remmelg, noted that during the 2022-2023 school year, there were 81 students at the school studying Estonian as a native language, and 64 students studying Estonian as a second language.

The high school confirmed that studying Estonian as a native language does not necessarily mean that Estonian is in fact the student's native language.

"It's important to keep in mind that many students who study Estonian as a native language come from bilingual or Russian-speaking families," Remmelg said.

Students at Kohtla-Järve High School also pointed out to ERR that the school had a high dropout rate. This means that earlier on, there were more students at the school struggling with Estonian than the school's final exam numbers would suggest.

Former education minister Tõnis Lukas wrote on social media in support of the Toila school, noting that, by law and under Estonia's 2021-2035 education development plan, exceptions can be made in Ida-Viru County, making local parents' request for an exception and to preserve the school as a small high school entirely justified.

"The confusion has been caused in part by a Ministry of Education representative, who told the court that receiving school investments from the state is not necessarily dependent on a school closing down its high school grade levels," Lukas continued. This sparked hopes, as the ministry's official position until then had been that Toila Municipality had to choose between accepting state investments in the school building or maintaining its high school grade levels.

"The municipal government chose the former, and hurried to shut down the high school level," the former minister noted, adding that it is natural to defend an Estonian-language school environment.

Court rejects complainants' other arguments

The complainants in the case had argued that Toila Municipality's decision last spring to reorganize Toila High School, including dropping its high school grade levels, was formally illegal and contained significant errors in judgment.

They accused the municipality of not taking into consideration that Toila High School is the only Estonian-language high school in Ida-Viru County, and that other high schools in the region have a high proportion of students who are not native speakers of Estonian, which would negatively impact the quality of their children's education. The municipality's decision, they stressed, would force many families to move out of Ida-Viru County.

The court, however, did not determine an error in judgment, citing the higher and steadily increasing numbers of native Estonian-speaking students at Kohtla-Järve High School in particular.

If students from the Toila school enroll at Kohtla-Järve High School, the share of Estonian-speaking students would increase even more. According to the court, this would likely reduce the share of students whose native language is not Estonian to 30 percent, which, according to the opinion of a linguist provided by the complainants, is an acceptable level of non-Estonian-speaking students to avoid placing an undue burden on Estonian-speaking children.

In light of this, the court concluded that the complainants' children have reasonable nearby access to a high school education at a school with a small proportion of non-Estonian-speaking students. It also emphasized that the complainants do not have the subjective right to demand that their children attend a school without any non-Estonian-speaking children.

The complaint also stated that when making its decision, the municipality had not considered the worsening of the students' learning environment. The parents would prefer their children to attend school at the more historical setting of Toila High School, rather than directly among apartment buildings as is the case in Jõhvi, Kohtla-Järve and Sillamäe.

The court determined that the municipality had, in fact, sufficiently analyzed the learning environment in Toila compared to the region's state high schools, finding that the Toila High School building is in bad shape and that the other schools in the area offer better conditions for students. The mere fact that one of Toila High School's buildings is of historical value cannot be considered a reason for preserving the school's high school grade levels.

"The right to an education does not mean that parents can demand a school environment they themselves prefer on subjective grounds," the court stated in its decision.

The complainants also pointed out that Toila Municipality had not taken into consideration the impact closing the high school level would have on commutes, or the organization of new school public transport routes. According to the disputed decision, the municipality acknowledged that the commute for students from Toila and Voka would become longer, but stated that suitable bus routes could be arranged in cooperation with the public transport center to transport students to and from Jõhvi and Kohtla-Järve.

The court acknowledged these changes will undoubtedly affect the complainants and their families' usual routines, but for their appeal to be upheld, these impacts would have to be disproportionate; currently, this situation does not meet this criterion.

While the students' commutes will increase somewhat, meaning more time spent traveling to and from school, it cannot be considered disproportionate given the high school students' age; many high school students across Estonia spend similar amounts of time commuting to and from school, and many parents across the country likewise bear similar time and transportation costs in driving their children to school.

The court pointed out that it is not possible to draw a precise line at which point such inconveniences become excessive. However, based on the circumstances of the current case, the court found that these changes will not significantly affect these students' access to education.

The complainants furthermore criticized the municipality for not conducting a substantive analysis when making its decision to shut down the high school level of Tori High School, instead making an automatic decision based on an investment proposal by the Ministry of Education and Research.

The court disagreed with this claim, noting that as can be seen in the disputed municipal decision, the ministry's investment proposal was an important consideration in the decision-making process, but not the only one.

The municipality had also taken other factors into account, such as the deteriorating demographic situation, the decrease in demand for education services in Toila Municipality and the fact that the learning environment at the municipality's schools is outdated.

The administrative court thus found the decision made by Toila Municipality on March 27, 2024, is neither in violation of the complainants' rights nor disproportionate, and dismissed the complainants' appeal.

Parents' language concerns not sufficiently addressed, say lawyers

In response to the court's recent decision, the lawyers representing the Toila school students' parents noted that the court had not sufficiently responded to concerns raised about the nature of the Estonian-language learning environments at the other high schools in the region, where Estonian is the language of instruction, but not the native language of most of their students.

The lawyers found that the closure of the 10th-12th grades at Toila High School is thus not merely another reorganization of the school system, but constitutes a significant restriction or even exclusion of opportunities for acquiring an Estonian-language education in Ida-Viru County. The decision will also weaken one of the region's stronger Estonian-speaking communities.

They also believe the court didn't analyze in detail whether, under the combined effect of the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia and the Basic Schools and Upper Secondary Schools Act, the state and local governments have an obligation to ensure that students can acquire an education in an Estonian-language learning environment.

The complainants had also sought to have the failure to adopt acts that would obligate local governments and the state to ensure the accessibility of education in an Estonian-language learning environment declared unconstitutional.

This issue was not addressed by the court, which relied on the fact that Kohtla-Järve High School, the alternative school proposed for Toila students, has a sufficient number of native Estonian-speaking students.

The court did acknowledge that organizing instruction in schools with students who are native speakers of other languages may be somewhat more complicated, but added that according to the Ministry of Education and Research, methods exist for teaching lessons in such circumstances.

The lawyers representing the parents noted, however, that even during court proceedings, the ministry did not detail what these methods were, or present any documentation describing these methods or data supporting their effectiveness.

Thus, the complainants believe the court left unanswered the question of whether the situation that has arisen in Toila Municipality is in fact constitutional, if no clarity or systematic guarantee exists regarding the quality of education for native Estonian-speaking children.

The 25 parents who appealed Toila Municipality's spring 2024 decision in court have not yet decided whether they will appeal the administrative court's ruling or not. They have until May 30 to decide.

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