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Evelin Ilves’ opening address at "The Yardstick of a Good School" – the 5th University of Tartu Ethics Centre conference on instilling core values Dorpat Conference Centre, Tartu, 4 December 2012

04.12.2012

Dear conference attendees,

As a citizen and as a parent I am encouraged to see that your conference is looking to eradicate the unnecessary pressure created by the pigeonholing of secondary schools as either 'good' or 'bad' based purely on exam results. I am also sure that there are more good schools than are reflected in the upper reaches of those rankings – just as I am convinced that those rankings distort the real picture.

Exam results have their place, but not as the ultimate determiners of whether a school is 'good' or 'bad'. How student-centred an approach they take, how happy the students are to go to school, how good the relationships are among and between students and teachers, how well they prepare students for working life and instil values of healthy living in them, how good the school dinners are, how effective the cooperation is between the school and parents and how successfully they foster modern ways of thinking in regard to society and the environment are just some of the key areas we should be looking at in our schools in addition to the knowledge our children gain from the lessons they learn.

I wish you all a successful conference and hope that both you and Estonia more broadly take a significant step closer to finding more suitable yardsticks with which to measure the success of our schools – so as to move towards a system that truly supports cooperation and development. We must strive to achieve a situation in which no matter where we live in this country, we know that our children are getting the best education in the world, precisely in terms of understanding and caring about the world.