Estonia is seeking fresh solutions for upgrading aging Soviet-era school buildings, aiming to develop an open-access toolkit to make future renovations easier.
The Ministry of Education and Research, in cooperation with the Government Office, has launched a project to find faster, more efficient ways to upgrade standardized school buildings that date back to the Soviet era.
Kaidi Põldoja, project manager at the ministry’s Education Infrastructure and Network Department, said full-scale overhauls are key to reducing disparities in learning environments nationwide.
“State high schools built in the past 15 years, along with other schools designed through architectural competitions, offer a much better learning environment than older buildings,” Põldoja said.
These spaces, she added, have a direct impact on teaching quality, student well-being and fostering a sense of community.
Rather than treating the occupation era’s standardized designs as a drawback, however, the EU-cofunded project aims to use them as an advantage, developing solutions that can be applied across multiple schools at once.
By addressing both layout and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) issues common in these buildings, officials hope to develop faster, higher-quality and more cost-effective renovation models.
Aimed at school operators, administrators, designers and local governments, a free, open-access toolkit featuring these model solutions is expected by the end of 2027, with proposed solutions tested in pilot schools.
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