OREANDA-NEWS   President of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid supported the full translation of education in the Republic into Estonian, speaking on Sunday with a solemn speech on the occasion of the 101th anniversary of the independence of the Republic in Tallinn.

According to Kaljulaid, it is with cautious optimism relates to the fact that in the Republic formed a common opinion regarding the future of Estonian schools.

"There are differences in how to achieve the desired, but most of us want to continue establishing a single school system in Estonia, which would not divide our people into two communities," - said the President.

According to Kaljulaid, the readiness of Russian-speaking compatriots to such a change is also constantly growing. "Of course, the path from desire to plan is long and difficult and, by the way, involves considerable costs. But we can not go down this path, because it will protect the independence, language and culture of Estonia and create equal opportunities for all residents of the country," the President said.

Now Russian schools and gymnasiums in Estonia have partially switched to teaching in Estonian, according to the law "on basic school and gymnasium" adopted in 2010, according to which the ratio of subjects in Estonian and Russian should be increased to 60% in Estonian and 40% in Russian. Currently, there are 74 schools in Estonia where education can be obtained in Russian.

In December last year, the largest opposition Reformist party initiated a bill on the full translation of education in kindergartens and schools into the state language. The Estonian Parliament did not support the idea of reformists, but the party again submitted to the Estonian Parliament a bill on the full translation of education into the state language.

Estonian authorities claim that the translation of all schools in the country into Estonian will increase the competitiveness of the Russian-speaking population, but representatives of the Russian community believe that the result of such a translation is a significant deterioration in the understanding of the subjects taught, depletion of vocabulary, poor performance, a significant increase in the workload of Russian children.