OECD Reviews of School Resources: Estonia 2016

Abstract

This work is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of OECD member countries.This document and any map included herein are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area. ISBN 978-92-64-25168-7 (print) ISBN 978-92-64-25173-1 (PDF) ISBN 978-92-64-25174-8 (epub) Series: OECD Reviews of School Resources ISSN 2413-4333 (print) ISSN 2413-3841 (online) The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law.Photo credits: Cover © VLADGRIN/Shutterstock.com.Corrigenda to OECD publications may be found on line at: www.oecd.org/about/publishing/corrigenda.htm. © OECD 2016You can copy, download or print OECD content for your own use, and you can include excerpts from OECD publications, databases and multimedia products in your own documents, presentations, blogs, websites and teaching materials, provided that suitable acknowledgement of OECD as source and copyright owner is given. All requests for public or commercial use and translation rights should be submitted to rights@oecd.org. Requests for permission to photocopy portions of this material for public or commercial use shall be addressed directly to the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) at info@copyright.com or the Centre français d'exploitation du droit de copie (CFC) at contact@cfcopies.com.Please cite this publication as: Santiago, P. et al. (2016) Kadi Serbak, Analyst, and Signe Uustal, Chief Expert, both Estonia was one of the countries which opted to participate in the country review strand and host a visit by an external review team. Members of the OECD review team were Paulo Santiago (OECD Secretariat), co-ordinator of the review; Anthony Levitas (Senior Fellow in International Studies, Brown University, the United States), Péter Radó (Education Consultant based in Budapest) and Claire Shewbridge (OECD Secretariat). The biographies of the members of the review team are provided in Annex B. This publication is the report from the review team. It provides, from an international perspective, an independent analysis of major issues facing the use of school resources in Estonia, current policy initiatives, and possible future approaches. The report serves three purposes: i) to provide insights and advice to Estonian education authorities; ii) to help other countries understand the Estonian approach to the use of school resources; and iii) to provide input for the final comparative analysis of the OECD School Resources Review. The scope for the analysis in this report includes early childhood education and school education (both general and vocati...

Teachers’ understanding about education decision-making processes at the macro, meso and micro levels

“…Policy initiatives on the macro level include the ongoing redefinition of responsibilities for education across administration levels (Santiago, Levitas, Rado & Shewbridge, 2016), which has a decisive role in shaping educational systems. In recent years, Estonia has placed considerable emphasis to improve the quality of the educational system and looks at international standards and best practices.…”

“…The establishment of the Estonian Lifelong Learning Strategy 2020 (2014) as the main reference for education policy, the curricular reform in education (National curricula for upper secondary schools, 2011) and a competence-based career system for teachers have changed the teaching workforce at the local level. There is great autonomy for the school management involved in teaching in Estonia (Santiago et al, 2016). National standards offer an opportunity for government and school leaders to monitor educational activities by learning outcomes and teachers' capacity for reporting (Sachs, 2016).…”

What difference do standards make to educating teachers?

“…In parallel to the discourse of autonomous professionalism, policies often adopt an "audit" or "managerial" professionalism discourse that emphasises accountability and effectiveness, and considers standards and teacher education as part of state regulated accountability (Tummons, 2014 [12] ; Sachs, 2001 [31] ). The co-existence of WHAT DIFFERENCE DO STANDARDS MAKE TO EDUCATING TEACHERS?…”

“…Although different levels mark the career stages in the standards, these do not translate into direct promotion opportunities for teachers (Santiago et al, 2016 [66] ). The Estonian standards for teachers were developed through an interactive process (ET2020 Working Group on Schools Policy, 2015 [79] ), in which the following stakeholder groups were represented:…”

La Objetividad en las Pruebas Estandarizadas / Objectivity in Standardized Tests

“…Entre las versiones de 2003de a 2015de (OECD, 2005de -2016, solo se menciona en dos reportes nacionales (Eslovaquia y República Checa) vinculándola con la neutralidad y la imparcialidad para garantizar medidas objetivas sobre el desempeño (Santiago, Halász, Levacíc y Shewbridge, 2016;Shewbridge, Herczyński, Radinger y Sonnemann, 2016).…”