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In 2024, Estonia launched a major educational reform: kindergartens and schools began a gradual transition to Estonian-medium education, to be completed in preschool and basic education by 2030. In Tartu, the transition began already in 2023. Until now, Estonia has maintained a dual school system—Estonian- and Russian-medium—inherited from the Soviet occupation. This paper examines the attitudes of Russian-speaking parents toward supporting their children’s mother tongue during the transition in Tartu’s bilingual schools and kindergartens. While Estonian legislative and strategic documents emphasise the importance of maintaining the mother tongue of pupils who study in a language different from their family language, institutional support and resources remain limited, placing the responsibility largely on families. The qualitative study is based on 25 in-depth interviews conducted in early 2023 with Russian-speaking parents whose children were attending transition schools and kindergartens in Tartu. The theoretical framework is based on research highlighting the importance of first-language development for additional language learning, academic achievement, and cognitive development. Content analysis reveals divergent parental attitudes. Some emphasise the need to preserve the mother tongue and expect schools to provide support, viewing multilingualism as a resource that strengthens identity and future prospects. Others prioritise rapid transition to Estonian-medium education, considering L1 development in educational settings less important. The findings highlight how legislative appreciation of multilingualism is undermined by the lack of institutional support. Full article

In 2023, the authors conducted a qualitative study in five bilingual educational institutions (two general education schools and three kindergartens) in Tartu, Estonia, undergoing a transition to Estonian-medium education. The empirical material for this qualitative research was collected during ten discussion evenings with Russian L1 parents, with around 300 attendees. Given the emotional and political sensitivity of the topic, the discussions were documented through researchers’ handwritten field notes and subsequently reconstructed from these notes for thematic analysis following the principles of qualitative content analysis. This study aimed to map the concerns and fears of Russian L1 parents and to collaboratively explore possible solutions. The broader objective was to understand and interpret Russian-speaking parents’ attitudes toward the shift to Estonian-medium instruction. A further aim was to raise language awareness among parents and to help lay a more positive foundation for the transition process. The theoretical framework draws on the notion that parents’ language attitudes significantly influence their children’s perceptions of the value of the language being learned. Our results show that many Russian L1 parents in Tartu consider it important for both Estonian- and Russian-speaking children to study in a shared, Estonian-medium learning environment. At the same time, parents identified several key challenges, including concerns about a decline in education quality, increased academic pressure and stress for children learning in a non-native language, a lack of suitable learning materials, and parents’ limited ability to assist with homework due to their own insufficient proficiency in Estonian. Full article