World views and educational budget
-
Member of the Riigikogu, Estonian Centre Party
The connections between world view and educational budget can be seen through the point of view of educational ideologies (values) and the educational policy decisions derived from those ideologies; this determines what the relationship between state and citizen is like when it comes to availability of education.
Compared to other states, Estonia invests a relatively large part of its public sector budget into education. Educational spending is 3.9 times greater than it was 12 years ago, and funding of vocational education has grown 4.5-fold. At the same time, statistical indicators are only numbers, and their meaning can only be understood with a thorough knowledge of a country’s educational sphere and its formative history. The outcome of financial policy is characterized by the relationship between its cost and the new quality of content achieved, and above all the social effect achieved. Thus the educational budget reflects both a country’s educational ideology and concrete educational policy preferences. The goal of Estonia has been to increase the social dimension of education – supporting socialization of people, with how well they are socialized being expressed in their ability to cope independently. This is the obligation of a caring state, the aim toward which we are indeed working.