President of Estonia Alar Caris spoke about Russian children encountered in a country with linguistic inequality. It is reported by RIA Novosti.
He explained that the origins of inequalities appear in kindergartens, where parents should pay extra lessons on Estonian language, while not everyone can afford it. “This is a bottleneck that can affect the further future of Russian-speaking children in Estonia, their competitiveness in the labor market, the confidence is that they are an equal part of our society,” he said.
Caris stands for universal Estonian-speaking education, but it allows the existence of Russian schools in the country. Earlier elected President of Estonia Alar Caris stated that the refusal of teaching in Russian in Estonia schools is impossible. The head of state also criticized the idea to make only Estonian-speaking higher education. According to him, such actions will be “some discrimination slightly”. At the same time, Caris stressed that the language still remains a significant split factor in society.
Almost 30 percent of Estonian residents consider Russian to be their relatives. The Russian-speaking population lives in almost all regions of Estonia, but their concentration is most high in the north-east of the country and in the south-east of Tallinn. At the moment, 74 Russian schools work in Estonia, where you can get an education partially in Russian. The number of items taught in such schools in Russian does not exceed 60 percent.