Report on ICT in education in the Republic of Estonia

Abstract

ICT has been a focus area of educational development in Estonia since the mid-1990s when the first national programme was launched to support the development of ICT infrastructure in schools, provide ICT trainings to teachers and supply schools with educational software. The Estonian Lifelong Learning Strategy 2020, which is the current national educational strategy, highlights digital focus on education as one of the five key areas. Estonia is known for its advanced digital society infrastructure that has enabled to build a wide range of secure e-services for people and organizations. In the last decade, an active ICT start-up ecosystem also merged in Estonia. This chapter provides a general overview of the country profile and describes the educational system in Estonia. It outlines the current state of school’s ICT infrastructure in Estonia and discusses the recent developments regarding digital educational resources. The current ICT development action plan for schools focuses on incorporating a digital culture into the learning process, providing necessary support by developing teachers’ digital competencies, building digital learning resources and educational e-services and improving the ICT infrastructure in schools. Despite the coordinated developments and significant investments, the actual integration of ICT into teaching and learning practices still varies a lot between different schools.