All gold-medal graduates no longer ensured invite to presidential reception
Following changes made by the Office of the President and the Ministry of Education and Research, all students to graduate upper secondary school in Estonia with a gold medal will no longer be guaranteed an invite to a special reception at the Rose Garden of the Presidential Palace in Kadriorg. Instead, every upper secondary school in the country will be guaranteed at least one invite.
"While in previous years, the Office of the President together with the Ministry of Education and Research has invited all gold medalists to a reception at the Rose Garden in the capital, that won't be the case this year: schools received a set number of invitations," writes Monday's edition of regional Tartu Postimees (link in Estonian).
The new arrangement means that the majority of gold medalists will not receive an invite, the paper noted.
According to Tarmu Kurm, director of the Ministry of Education's Communications Department, and Public Relations Adviser to the President Taavi Linnamäe, this is not actually a new arrangement, but rather a return to the arrangement in place prior to 2014, when former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves began inviting all gold-medal graduates to the annual reception.
Instead, the ministry and the Office of the President want to ensure that every Estonian upper secondary school receives at least one invite to the reception, regardless of whether or not the school has any gold medalists graduating in a given year or not.
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Editor: Aili Vahtla