At an information seminar for local governments and schools, the Ministry of Education announced that all children under the age of 18 who have moved to Estonia, with certain exceptions, must fulfill their compulsory education requirement at an Estonian school. Attending online classes at a foreign school does not exempt them from this obligation.

The Tartu city government's education department asked the ministry which legal provision the requirement was based on as the Education Act does not explicitly establish such a rule.

Marika Peekmann, a senior expert at the Ministry of Education, said the requirement stems from the combined provisions of the Education Act and the Basic Schools and Upper Secondary Schools Act.

"The law does not provide for the possibility of considering the compulsory education requirement fulfilled for a person residing in Estonia solely on the basis of enrollment in a foreign educational institution. This is also supported by the objectives of the compulsory education reform, the obligation of local governments to monitor compliance with compulsory education requirements under the law and so on," Peekmann said.

She added that accepting enrollment in a foreign school as fulfilling the compulsory education requirement for children living in Estonia would raise the question of why the law links compulsory education to residence in Estonia in the first place.

"The central idea of the compulsory education reform is that local governments monitor and ensure the education of young people living in Estonia. If enrollment in a foreign school or participation in an online school were sufficient, local governments would have no real way of verifying whether a student is actually studying, how much they are studying, whether the instruction meets the required educational standards or whether their studies are continuing without interruption," the senior expert said.

According to Peekmann, this would create a gray area in which compulsory education requirements would formally be met, but the state would have no real overview of a young person's educational progress.

"The Estonian state cannot automatically assess the legal status of a foreign school, the standard of its curriculum, how instruction is actually organized or whether learning outcomes are being achieved," she explained.

Peekmann said the problem is particularly acute in the case of foreign online or alternative educational institutions, as the state would have no clear basis for determining which forms of foreign education meet the objectives of compulsory education and which do not.

The ministry's senior expert said the aim of the compulsory education reform was not merely to ensure that young people receive some form of education, but also to reduce school dropout rates and the number of young people who are neither studying nor working.

"Achieving this objective requires students to be monitored within the Estonian education system, their educational progress to be recorded in the Estonian Education Information System (EHIS) and support measures to be made available when necessary. In most cases, this is not possible with foreign educational institutions," Peekmann noted.

Starting this academic year, the Ministry of Education extended compulsory education to the age of 18, meaning that students who complete basic school must continue their education at an upper secondary school, vocational school or in preparatory studies. The compulsory education requirement does not apply to the children of foreign diplomats.

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