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Non-Estonian language education
  The law on basic, secondary and vocational education states that the working language should be Estonian, but it could also be some other language. In municipal schools the decision is made by a local government council, and in state schools by the Ministry of Education. The language of a pre-primary institution is determined by a local government council, and each group must have one language. In an educational institution, some classes or groups may have another language. These institutions are thus bilingual. In 1997/98, 596 schools out of the total 730 were Estonian, 111 Russian and 23 both Estonian and Russian. There were 151 478 Estonian-language students at the day basic and upper-secondary schools, and 66 023 Russian-language students. At vocational secondary schools, one third study in Russian, at higher educational institutions the per cent of Russian-speakers is 14.

In 1990, the Russian-language Jewish School was founded in Tallinn; in 1992 a class in the Ukrainian language started work at one of the Tallinn schools.

There are Sunday schools and language courses at the cultural societies of national minorities, teaching their mother tongue, culture and history.

Some schools of general education that have specialised in teaching various languages, have extra lessons in English, German, French or Russian.

The present Russian-language schools are the successors of schools established in Estonia during the Soviet period. These schools followed the all-Union curricula and used the textbooks meant for the whole Soviet Union. A major task in reforming the education system is the integration of Russian-language schools into the unified Estonian educational system under which all would follow the Estonian curricula, use Estonian textbooks and provide students with the level of Estonian necessary for coping in our society.

The law on basic and secondary schools states that by the year 2007, all graduates from non-Estonian language basic schools should have sufficient knowledge of Estonian to enable them to continue their studies in the Estonian language. To ensure the fulfilment of this law, the government confirmed the plan of development of non-Estonian language schools in January 1998, and the plan pays special attention to teaching Estonian. The 1998 state budget has considerably increased resources for further education of non-Estonian speaking teachers, especially of those who teach Estonian. Many foreign countries are of great help in this field.

 
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