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Education is a crucial aspect of Estonia’s digital society. Not only does it help prepare future generations for the labor market, but it ensures that students can tackle advances in digitalisation. As such, it makes sense that aspects of education itself becomes digitalised. The 8th video in the Enter e-Estonia: the video series looks at some of the benefits that e-education brings to the students, teachers, and parents.
In this video: education supported by digitalisation
Much of e-education occurs on the Estonia Education Information System (EHIS). This is a database that stores information about educational institutions, teachers, and graduation documents. It allows teachers to get an overview of their students, for the government to gain insights into educational trends, and is useful for students, as well. For example, if an Estonian student wants to apply to university, they simply transfer their graduation documents stored in EHIS to their desired university.
Additionally, there are various e-school systems. A student’s grades, attendance, and homework assignments are all examples of the kind of information available on this platform. Parents can verify a student’s absence via the system, which in turn has helped reduce skipping by 30% over the past 5 years. It has also helped cut administrative time for teachers by almost half.
The next step for e-education is the goal to digitalise all educational materials by 2020. This should reduce costs for parents and schools, as well as reduce the environmental impact that replacing textbooks every 3 years incurs. Moreover, Estonia’s current Lifelong Learning Strategy aims to provide better forecasting for future skills. It will also help grant educational opportunities to people in their post-schooling years.
It’s worth noting that public universities are free for Estonians. And perhaps due to the emphasis on IT skills, 1/10 university students studies IT. By giving its citizens these various e-education platforms, Estonia has created an educational system the envy of the world. And armed its students with the necessary skills to continue creating future digital innovation.
