Estonian Education Personnel Union General Assembly

Public Address to the Estonian Parliament Riigikogu, the Government of the Republic, Ministry of Education and Research

Rights and Obligations of Educators

Recently there have been debates about problems at school due to students behaving inappropriately, indifference of parents when raising their children, bullying and violence in schools, teachers and school management having too little power to deal with these problems efficiently. There have been lots of suggestions about how to solve the situation, how to create better conditions for the pedagogical work of educators, how to make the pedagogical and educational work more efficient. The Estonian Ministry of Education and Research has asked for concurring and opinions about the new Bill of Basic School and Upper Secondary School. Estonian Education Personnel Union would suggest as one solution to solve these problems effectively – to regulate teachers’ rights and obligations as the law already regulates the students’ rights and obligations. Therefore we suggest:

-to add a special paragraph in the Bill of Basic and Upper Secondary Schools and to regulate the rights of teachers in addition to regulating their obligations. Legislation must provide certainty for the staff of the school, for the parents and for the society but first and foremost for the teachers that in addition to their obligations they also have rights in their job that are guaranteed by law;

-the school management must ensure and be responsible for a safe learning environment for the students as well as for the teachers, therefore they must have rights guaranteed by law to do so;

-we must be more clear in regulating the parents’ rights and obligations both in raising their children and in working together with the school;

-we need clearly regulated measures (as teachers’ rights to guarantee order and to influence the students that disturb the order) to guarantee a safe learning environment, to avoid bullying and to guarantee discipline during the lessons;

-as the new law will bring changes and imply more individual work with students and parents, that will also increase the working load of teachers. Therefore we need to regulate not only the working hours but also the content of the teachers’ working load.

-in addition to providing the necessary working conditions for teachers we must guarantee them a fair salary according to their contribution.

We hope that Riigikogu, the Government of the Republic and the Ministry of Education and Research will prepare the necessary bills and implement these laws in the near future.

EEPU General Assembly

October 28th 2008

Tallinn

Chair of the Assembly Evi Veesaar