Estonia fears English too dominant in its schools
TALLINN (AFP) — Education authorities in Estonia Thursday warned that the hands-down dominance of English in its schools is depriving the Baltic state of the language specialists it will need in the future.
A hefty 84 percent of pupils in this country of 1.3 million people opt to study English, according to official statistics.
Some 41 percent take Russian as a foreign language. Russian is also the native tongue of around a third of the population.
German and French, meanwhile, come in a distant third and fourth, studied respectively by just 18 percent and three percent of pupils.
"As a result, Estonia is now lacking and also likely far into the future to lack a sufficient number of specialists able to work in other official languages of the European Union," Kersti Sostar, head of the language department of Estonia's state examination and qualification centre, told AFP.
Estonia joined the EU in 2004, 13 years after breaking free from the crumbling Soviet Union.
Since independence, the country has enjoyed spiralling economic growth rates and, thanks to its flourishing hi-tech industry, has earned the nickname "E-stonia".
Sostar said the main reason why English has the upper hand is the fact that many parents see the language as vital for their offspring.
"In addition to English and Russian we need much more teaching of German and French," she said.
Estonian schools are obliged to offer pupils the option of learning two foreign languages, the first when pupils are around eight years old and the second three years later.
But the choice of which languages to include on the curriculum is left up to the individual school.
During the Soviet era, Russian was obligatory for all Estonian-speaking pupils.
The language fell from favour after independence -- only 29 percent of pupils were studying it as a foreign language -- but has gained ground in recent years despite political tensions between Estonia and its giant neighbour.
Even though French trails behind in Estonian schools, the language has become increasingly fashionable among officials since Estonia joined the EU.
Many ministries and other state institutions organise French courses for employees, and one of the latest pupils is President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
