Dear reader,

There are several stories we tell about education in Estonia. The most reassuring is the story of rankings and assessments. For reasons that even we cannot fully explain, our education system consistently places young Estonians among the world’s top performers in international comparisons. It is a story of a society that values education, autonomous teachers, smart solutions and the courage to experiment.

The other familiar story is more troubling. According to this view, despite its strong performance in rankings and assessments, our education system is hollow and nearing the limits of its sustainability. Its recurring themes are teacher shortages, unsustainable workloads, declining enjoyment of school among pupils and growing concerns about mental health.

These two narratives have shaped debates on education in Estonia for years – so long that we have come to view education through an increasingly narrow lens, as if under a microscope. We focus on individual problems and risk losing sight of education’s broader impact.

Over several decades, the Estonian Human Development Report has sought to illuminate precisely these broader dimensions. This edition asks what impact education has on our society and which underlying factors – often powerful yet largely unnoticed – shape young people’s educational pathways and their opportunities in society.

The report is guided by data and expert analysis. The numbers may be dispassionate, but the story they tell is anything but.

One central conclusion stands out: the effects of schooling stay with people throughout their lives. Education is something like a second genome – a force that shapes future trajectories much as our genes do. However, just as a biological genome does not predetermine a person’s destiny, educational choices and opportunities rarely determine outcomes outright. Education shapes probabilities: where people are likely to end up, what opportunities become available to them and how vulnerable they may be.

This insight is most meaningful at the level of society rather than the individual. It reveals the causal chains through which education affects every sphere of life, showing how each sector bears the costs or reaps the benefits of the population’s educational capital.

Extracurricular education is as much a matter of internal security as of education policy; teacher shortages affect regional development and economic competitiveness alike; mental well-being at school is reflected years later in health outcomes and working life.

For this reason, we cannot afford to ignore the insidious deepening of educational inequality. It undermines a fundamental principle of human development: that every child should have the opportunity to receive a good education, regardless of their family background.

This report does not focus on specific policy recommendations. Instead, it creates space to reflect on how to make decisions that are necessary but difficult, and how to resist the temptation to add yet another measure where what is really needed is a choice and the willingness to let something go. One recurring theme is data literacy: the ability to make use of the knowledge we already possess rather than continually produce new studies whose findings remain unimplemented. These are valuable principles not only in education but also more broadly.

The report connects with earlier Estonian Human Development Reports,which have examined mental health, spatial policy and migration. Each addressed a knotty challenge – a complex set of interconnected problems for which there are no simple solutions but where inaction risks slowing or even reversing the country’s development.

The Estonian Human Development Reports have helped make public debate on complex issues more focused and evidence-based. What matters is that our discussions ultimately help untangle these complex knots. In that effort, all of us have both an opportunity and a role to play.

Alar Karis
President of the Republic of Estonia