Table Of ContentLESSONS FROM ESTONIA’S
EDUCATION SUCCESS STORY
This book explores how Estonia, despite high levels of poverty, has transformed
its education system to become Europe’s top performer on PISA (Programme for
International Student Assessment).
The engaging narrative uncovers reforms, mistakes and lessons learnt that have
been harnessed to create a high-performing, high-equity education system, which
includes social and education policies fostering equity, inclusion, learner autonomy,
as well as schoolteacher and principal professionalism, autonomy and responsibility.
It unearths how easy access to a wide range of data such as perceptions of well-being,
autonomy and connectedness, in addition to examination results, builds internal and
external accountability, and contributes to collective stakeholder efficacy.
Grounded in research from Estonia and beyond, this is an ideal read for educators,
administrators, academics, university students, change agents and parents interested
in school system improvement. As equity, equality and inclusion are core drivers of
the Estonian education system, this book would also be of interest to those working
in social justice, inclusion and diversity.
Peeter Mehisto is Honorary Research Associate at University College London
Institute of Education, UK. He has won a HRH The Duke of Edinburgh ESU
book award and has also been nominated for the Yidan Prize.
Maie Kitsing is the former Head of the Estonian Ministry of Education and
Research’s Supervisions Division and of the General Education Department. She is
currently an adviser to the Estonian Ministry of Education and Science’s External
Evaluation Department.
LESSONS FROM
ESTONIA’S EDUCATION
SUCCESS STORY
Exploring Equity and High
Performance through PISA
Peeter Mehisto and Maie Kitsing
Cover image: © Getty Images
First published 2023
by Routledge
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© 2023 Peeter Mehisto and Maie Kitsing
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to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-18648-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-18649-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-25554-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003255543
Typeset in Bembo
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations x
Introduction: setting the stage 1
1 History: challenges and gifts from the past 6
2 Education system overview: what makes it work 26
3 Equity and high performance: raising the bar and closing the gap 76
4 Curriculum: aligning implementation with intentions 110
5 Teachers: professional autonomy and high standards 146
6 Evaluation: prioritising a formative approach for all 182
7 Summary and conclusions: resilience, dissatisfaction and
imagination 213
Afterword: Estonia’s story and Singapore’s story 227
References 230
Index 247
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
2.1 Structure of Estonian education system 31
2.2 Lifelong Learning Strategy 2020 overview 50
3.1 2018 mean performance in science 81
3.2 2018 mean performance in mathematics 83
3.3 2018 mean performance in reading 84
5.1 Age of Estonian teachers 174
6.1 Grade 4 student 2020 survey results: National average 206
Tables
2.1 Average Estonian and OECD PISA test scores 40
2.2 Estonia’s ranking on PISA test scores in reference to
European and OECD nations 41
4.1 Subject breakdown of basic school curriculum for
1996 and 2011: Total number of 45-minute lessons
per key stage per week 119
4.2 Overview of competences included in curricula
over an 18-year period 134
5.1 General education teacher monthly salaries in EUR in
comparison to national average 168
PREFACE
This is a book about an educational transformation in a small country on the edge
of Europe, with a colonised and decolonised history. We are told how numerous for-
eign powers over a long period of time vied for control of what is now Estonia, each
of them leaving their mark on these nascent societies. These included the Germans,
Danes, Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes and Russians. Peeter Mehisto and Maie Kitsing
carefully and in rich detail provide us with an account of how Estonia transformed
its education system. Since the development of human capital theory with its ambi-
tious and far-reaching claims to have identified a significant correlation between
education and economic achievement, we have witnessed an unprecedented bevy
of educational reforms, around the world and particularly in small countries such
as Estonia. These reforms have largely concentrated on curricular and workforce
changes using evaluation processes and techniques, premised on national and inter-
national research findings.
And here in Estonia, as you would expect, those educationalists at the centre of
these reforms have had to overcome a multitude of problems. In order to find solu-
tions, or overcome these impediments or failures to successful implementation, it
is necessary to address four facets or dimensions of the problem. The first of these
refers to the structure of the new programme (or series of programmes), i.e. its
comprehensiveness, coherence and relevance. The second facet or dimension refers
to the sites of implementation, how they are constructed and how they functioned
prior to the new reform. The third dimension refers to how the implementation site
would need to be changed to accommodate the new initiative, and the fourth refers
to issues of institutional structure, form and capacity at these sites. Peeter Mehisto’s
and Maie Kitsing’s book shows us how these facets or aspects of implementation can
be successfully reformed, in the country in which they live and are committed to.
More recent education policy researchers depict curriculum reform and
policy-making as a “messy,” complex and contested enterprise. As has been frequently
viii Preface
observed, policy is an object of contest and struggle between competing ideolo-
gies, education visions, personal interests and political or organisational positions.
All of these forces come together in an incubator of international, national and
local contexts. Understanding education reforms requires us to interrogate policy
cycles, policy discourses, policy actors, policy arenas and contexts. Policy is produced
through a series of struggles involving many actors and agencies, operating in unique
conditions, as Peeter Mehisto and Maie Kitsing chronicle so well.
Change to an education system and its curriculum is always a change to the sta-
tus quo, to what already exists. Therefore, in trying to understand how an education
system and its curricula change, it is important to understand how those systems and
curricula were structured. What this means is that the same programme of reform
delivered in different countries is likely to have different effects on the different ele-
ments of the system and will have different histories within the system. It is possible
to categorise reform effect and history in five ways: point of entry into the system
and direction of flow, sustainability of the integrity of the reform, intensity of the
reform or capacity to effect change, malleability of the system or capacity to change,
and institutionalisation.
However, despite what is now known about successful educational change, it is
noteworthy that education systems and their institutional arrangements are stub-
bornly resistant to change. Two central messages about overcoming resistance to
change arise out of the work of leading thinkers. The first is that those leading
change require high levels of meta-cognitive, meta-affective and meta-social aware-
ness. The second is that people approach change with their personal understandings
and feelings, and that these need to be explored in order to understand their impact
on the work process. In other words, change in and of education systems almost
always requires more than mechanical or technical solutions. Whatever changes are
sought, these also need to lead to a change in beliefs, feelings, knowledge and behav-
iours, if that change is to be sustainable.
In trying to understand how interventions in education systems work, in the first
instance we need to remind ourselves of the principal elements of a public educa-
tional system, namely, that it comprises the state’s deployment of human resources,
its strategic hold over infrastructure and other material and financial resources, its
mobilisation of ceremonies, rituals, meanings and values, and its creation and main-
tenance of a central system of praxis. The concept of praxis has four elements: prac-
tice on practice, practice on thought, practice on ourselves and practice unfolding
from thought (there are four possibilities here: scientism, technical rationality, multi-
perspectivism and extension). This praxis – after all this is what this book is – has
two central dimensions: thought on the practice of thought and thought reflecting
on practice.
David Scott
Professor of Curriculum, Learning and Assessment
University College London Institute of Education
10.10.2021
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank the following people for their support and/or advice and feedforward on
the book project and its many drafts: Tiina Annus, Eda Anton, Heli Aru-Chabilan,
Gerald Beauchamp, Eve Eisenschmidt, Imbi Henno, Tatjana Kiilo, Irene Käosaar,
Tim Kelly, Aire Koik, Kersti Kõiv, Pille Kõiv, Merike Kull, Mart Laanpere, Priit
Laanoja, Natalja Lapikova, Pille Liblik, Karin Lukk, David Marsh, Kristi Mere,
Pak Tee Ng, Liilia Oberg, Margus Pedaste, Robert Peetsalu, Kadri Peterson, Tiina
Peterson, Aimi Püüa, Epp Rebane, Katrin Saks, David Scott, Diane Tedick, Margit
Timakov, Kristel Vaher, Kai Võlli, and the OECD Future of Education and Skills
2030 initiative.
