Photo credit: press service of the Ministry of Education of Russia / edu.gov.ru (CC BY 4.0)
About 79% of Estonian schoolchildren who study a second foreign language choose Russian. Despite the reduction in the teaching of the Russian language and attempts to oust it from education, interest in it in Estonian schools remains, the country’s Ministry of Education and Science admitted, Baltnews reports.
It is noted that schoolchildren from Estonia are deprived of the opportunity to study Russian as a first foreign language, and they are offered mainly Spanish, Finnish and German as second foreign languages.
According to the ministry, in 2022, the proportion of students studying these languages was very small. Last year, due to various restrictions initiated by the Estonian authorities and pressure on the Russian language, this figure increased.
However, Estonian education officials failed to make schoolchildren lose interest in the Russian language. The chief expert of the language policy department of the Ministry of Education and Science of Estonia, Pille Pyiklik, noted that last year about 79% of schoolchildren studying a second foreign language chose Russian. The decline was only 1-3%.
The expert admitted that there remains a high demand for teaching the Russian language in the republic. ''There was a slight downward trend, but now it is gaining momentum,'' she noted.
Russkiy Mir
