In a dark corridor inside a former factory building in central Tallinn Tallinn, the largest city and capital of Estonia (population 440 000). , a group of pre-teen girls is running around in led-light encrusted costumes, giggling in excitement as they form enlightened creatures in the dark corridor. It took them an hour to solder the led-strips together, attach a battery, and glue the whole system on their dark clothes.

This was one of the many classes spread all across Estonia where girls in the age range of 8-12 would meet once a week to take on challenging problem-solving in the context of real-life phenomena such as electricity, magnetism, sound, and speed. In some of the most exciting classes the girls built their own speakers out of cardboard and magnets, carved musical instruments out of carrots, flew drones through assigned tackle courses, and chased two-wheeler robots they built themselves. All the necessary materials for a class fit in a regular plastic box and each class would be conducted with the help of 2-3 volunteers, most likely parents of the girls, but also teachers or just active members of local communities.

“The girls and the emotions were up in the sky,” exclaims Urve, a group mentor from Kuressaare Town in the westernmost island in Estonia, Saareemaa Island (pop.13,000). , after a class where the girls could test how a compound lever mechanism works by hoisting each other up in an empty canister tied to a rope. “The fantasy of the girls really starts running wild once they realise what they can do,” adds another teacher from Elva, a small town in Southern Estonia. The mentors, most of whom have no background in tech, are all there from pure enthusiasm and willingness to learn on the go. The learning goes both ways: the grownups assist the kids with using the tools and safety rules while the girls tend to be much more acquainted with using apps on mobile devices and finding tutorials online.

Frustration leads to new solutions

“A few years ago, my then 10-year-old daughter was kicked out of her robotics class because the school had to cut down on the capacity of the after-school activities and had to get rid of the ‘less active’ students, which included both of the girls in the club. This made me wonder why tech-classes are so gender-biased and what makes the girls less active in the classroom,” says Taavi Kotka, an entrepreneur and the former CIO of Estonia, who is the mastermind and the key force behind the movement. His frustration with the system led him to come up with a girls-only technology club: “We decided that the content would have to be based on gamification elements that would be attractive and available to anyone who’s interested.”

That is, anyone, besides the boys. Because the presence of boys tends to ‘shut down’ the girls since the boys are expected to be – and quite often are because of the very same expectations – much smarter when it comes to using technology. When there are no boys around to tell them how they do it all wrong, the girls feel much safer in opening up to learning new skills.

HK Unicorn Squad (the abbreviation refers to Taavi’s daughter Helena Kotka) started off in their own basement with 17 local girls who would meet once a week to solve practical problems Taavi, his wife Kerstin Kotka and their neighbour Liis Koser, would come up with. Now, Liis has become the executive of the movement that has 1000 members and 150 mentors in 80 clubs across Estonia. 

From the very beginning, Taavi and Liis would prepare the classes with tutorial videos and boxes filled with all the necessary materials, which were rotated from one class to another. The logistics are obviously quite a headache but there have only been a few instances when the box did not reach the remotest corners of Estonia in time (due to postal service errors), with active groups in places like Kihelkonna, Põlva Town in the SE of Estonia(pop. 5,500). , and Kolga.

“Our goal is to reach an audience of at least 3000 girls, every tenth girl in that age group in Estonia,” Taavi explains. “That equals the number of boys going through after-school robotics classes in a year so far.” He refers to programs like the international First Lego League program, which usually attracts around an 80/20 ratio of boys/girls, which, according to the organisers of the FLL movement in Estonia has already ‘changed a lot’ from 90/10 in the past decade, but it’s still mostly boys going for the robot challenge and girls preparing the presentation portion.

Taavi claims they are especially happy that most of the Unicorn Squad clubs are located outside of Tallinn Tallinn, the largest city and capital of Estonia (population 440 000). and other bigger townships, therefore catering for the apparent hunger of age-appropriate and immersive tech activities for girls. It’s not unlikely that the Unicorn Squad curriculum could soon replace the outdated arts and crafts classes in schools where, in many cases, the boys and girls are still segregated into two groups: while the boys learn how to operate modern technology like the 3D printers and CNC-machines, the girls still do embroidery, sew pillowcases and cook… and the boys get to eat what the girls cooked.

From one to eighty clubs within two years

The initiative, going from just one club to more than 80 in less than 2 years, has already been noticed and applauded by other players in the field as a necessary means to change the stereotypes. So far, Taavi Kotka funded the whole movement by himself, but as of this spring, the Good Deed Education Fund, set up by entrepreneurs (from IT backgrounds mostly) have decided to pitch in and support the further development of the Unicorn Squad with 100 000 euros. 

“What the Unicorn Squad does is to teach girls the necessary skills for the 21st  century – how to take initiative, solve critical problems and do it with different STEAM tools,” says Pirkko Valge from the Good Deed Education Fund. “We hope to see that their lessons will be integrated into the school curriculum and every girl and boy will have the Unicorn Squad experience in their lifetime.”

The need to solve a problem does not come from personal experience and frustration only. Based on most recent statistics, the otherwise booming ICT sector is still heavily male-biased with three men per one female dominating the industry. Although some IT companies boast 38% female ratios, and women are obtaining executive roles more often instead of customer support positions only, the overall picture still looks rather grim. 

A study that was commissioned by TransferWise from researchers at the Institute of Educational Sciences and the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Tartu University of Tartu - Tartu Ülikool is an Estonian higher education institute. , conducted among 740 9 th and 12 th graders in Estonia concluded that only 21% of girls – as compared to 53% of boys in the same age group – would see their future in the field of ICT. The reasons for not being interested, they pointed out in the survey, span from boring programming classes to not having any positive female role models.

Although Kotka is adamant that the Unicorn Squad classes remain exclusive for girls only, in Vivistop Telliskivi the mentors experimented with a mixed group next to the girls-only club. “It’s probably too early to make any conclusions yet but based on our observations, boys enjoyed the classes just as much as the girls, and since our kids are used to working in mixed-gender teams, we really did not see any difference in the results,” claims Mari-Liis Lind, the cofounder and CEO of Vivita, who has been one of the mentors of the girls-only club for more than a year now. “But it depends on far too many aspects like the drive of the mentors, the individuals in the group, etc.”

Yet, the feedback that Liis Koser has collected from the mentors over the past year points to high levels of satisfaction: “Based on the data we already have, we can say that girls only groups really work. Our lessons are looked forward to and we don’t see any decline in the girls’ motivation. We basically don’t have absences – girls miss the class for health reasons only.”

One course covers ten classes and usually runs from September to December and/or March to May. All the groups that started the first course have continued to the second, i.e. there has been a 100% continuation rate on groups who have moved from the second course to the third course as well. “Only 4-5% of all girls quit after the first or second course and usually not because they have lost interest or they didn’t like it, but because they have moved away or some other after-school activities like piano or ballet lessons don’t allow them to continue,” Liis concludes. “Once the parents have seen that the technology classes are here to stay, it will hopefully be easier for them to decide to choose the clubs for their daughters and we will earn an equal standing among the more traditional after school activities.”

"We would all have finer lives if we were better prepared to co-exist on the little blue dot we call Earth," says Märt Aro. He believes this could be achieved if we invite the community to offer solutions to the educational issues they see. Together with a team of volunteers, Aro initiated quick crisis relief efforts: “When the crisis started, we asked Estonian EdTech companies to make their solutions accessible free of charge in Estonia in cooperation with the government initiative Education Nation so everybody would have access to the best possible remote-learning tools. Then we extended the free offer internationally – 15 different companies joined initially. 

Now the movement has become a NordicBaltic joint initiative with more than 100 companies under the umbrella of eachmillions.org.” Aro is glad that the EdTech startup sector has lived up to the expectations and has used this opportunity to prove its value for learners.

“The agility of the startup approach allowed us to react fast and find solutions literally overnight,” says Aro, who could tap into his own experience as a startup founder. As a university student, he discovered through his first company that being an entrepreneur is hard work: “So, I decided it’s only worth it if it creates some added value for society and decided to focus on educational development. 

Education is the foundation of who we are – improving education is essential if we want to have a better society for all of us. If we had access to great education globally, we would probably not have to talk about global warming today, because everyone would comprehend that it’s suicide not to correct our mistakes.”

Aro now focuses on supporting educational innovation via the Nordic EdTech Forum – N8: “Educational innovation is nothing new. Take Gutenberg’s printing press, for example, from the 1440s. The ball-point pen was invented in 1888 by John J. Loud but it was allowed to be used in schools many decades later.” In the 21 st century, the speed of innovation is much faster: “Thanks to the spread of high-speed internet and the invention of cloud computing we have recently seen an explosion in EdTech solutions, but we need to still work on which of these tools actually work and add to educational outcomes. After all, not all solutions are good.”

Before looking at specific technological tools, Aro recommends having a better understanding of our goals: “We live in the time of a big paradigm shift from an industrial to an information society. Due to this, the expectations towards schools have changed dramatically. 

100 years ago, the expectation was that people who finished school had to be prepared to work 60-hour workweeks in factories, working 6 days a week in jobs that they detested and that were filled with routine. What are society’s expectations towards school leavers today and how can we fulfil them?”

“Tech development work can’t be separated from the rest of society. Ideally, we should first agree on the desired ‘product’ of the 21st -century school. After the aim is clear we can look at how and which EdTech solutions can help to achieve those goals.”

Learning is more than acquiring knowledge

While traditional testing at school typically measures knowledge, the skills emphasised by the World Economic Forum as crucial to cope during the 4 th industrial revolution are more elusive to traditional testing methods. 

The European Union is leading the development of eight fundamental skills that could also be tested: literacy; multilingualism; numerical, scientific and engineering skills; digital and technology-based competencies; interpersonal skills, and the ability to adopt new competencies; active citizenship; entrepreneurship; cultural awareness and expression. 

Estonia is already able to measure digital skills and is about to start measuring social skills such as communication. If more soft skills are needed to navigate the complexities of the Information Era then learning will have to change as well, creating a need to develop ways to measure improvements in skills such as emotional intelligence, creativity, or cognitive flexibility.

For Aro, methodological innovation comes before technology: “A teacher can choose to just teach multiplication or choose a method that enables the kids to cooperate at the same time. There are methods available to obtain academic knowledge whilst developing other useful skills. We need to support teachers with ways of measuring the complex. This could be done with the help of a learning analytics tool to make sure that, in addition to learning multiplication, we also learn teamwork, leadership skills, etc. Because: what we measure is what we get.”

Another intriguing aspect of today’s education globally is that we educate citizens to participate in a democratic society using an authoritarian school system. “Conflict resolution is a critical skill in a democratic society – if this is not learned, how can we have a better society for everyone to live in? Instead of just telling learners what they must do, we have to learn how to trigger the intrinsic motivation in students and minimise top-down instructions.”

While soft skills are increasingly important, it might seem odd to move towards technological solutions in learning. Can an app really be empathetic and replace human interaction? It can’t and it shouldn’t. According to Aro, technology’s main role currently is to save the teachers’ time for things that computers can’t do: “There is reason to believe that the academic ability of the teacher is less important than the motivation of the child to learn. And the latter can be affected by seemingly invisible factors. For example, if the child’s brain is preoccupied with worrying about a hurt friend, (s)he will not be able to excel in academic learning. While focused on moving through the curriculum, a teacher hardly finds the individual time to even discover problems. Technology can free up teachers’ time and support teachers in achieving better results with current resources.” 

Technology can also enable more adaptive and individualised learning paths to enable each child to reach their full potential. When dividing students into grades by age, we often see a wide range of developmental differences – up to 4 years – in one classroom. With the help of technology, we will be able to offer customised learning paths that benefit each learner most at a low-cost per child.

Let the whole world learn

The ambition of Estonian EdTech founders is nothing short of teaching the whole world. Having founded four educational companies, among them DreamApply, which makes international education more accessible worldwide, Aro has recognised three main models in educational development: “Enthusiasm-based projects don’t have a business model and usually end when people run out of resources. 

Project-based innovation that is funded by 1-3-year grants often comes to a dead end because it may take 3 years to create an educational solution that people actually want to use. The startup model means that, when looking for educational solutions, the initiators look for possibilities to solve issues globally while earning enough to pay fair salaries to their team members in a sustainable manner.”

According to Aro, there are about 500 EdTech startup-like initiatives in the Nordic-Baltic region and the majority of them has been created by students: “The reason is very simple – they have just gone through the educational experience and discovered things that could be improved with the help of technology. In a way, they are still naïve enough to believe they can make the world a better place. We need these crazy people who believe that they can change the world, as they are the ones who do.”

The Estonian educational environment has been intertwined with digital and technological solutions for decades, just like the rest of the country. The Tiger Leap initiative in the early 1990s that brought IT and the internet to schools is considered part of the foundation for Estonia’s digital development. The recent worldwide experiment with remote learning during the COVID-19 lockdown has made the advantages of this digital backbone clearer than ever. As the secretary of state at the Ministry of Education and Research Mart Laidmets puts it: “We have already been preparing for this kind of crisis for 25 years.”

Trying to pinpoint the foundation of the success of Estonia’s education is not as easy as it seems and the correlation with the use of technology is not inevitable.

Innove foundation is one of the pillars of educational innovation and has been tasked by the government to lead the Education Nation initiative. Birgit Lao, CEO of Innove, points out several aspects that have contributed to the PISA victory: “Historically, the education system of Estonia has been very decentralised. The school headmasters and teachers have far-reaching responsibility for the methodology. Secondly, the curriculum is very flexible. It just leads towards expected study outcomes in a subject and general skills without prescribing how to achieve them in detail – this is the task and opportunity of the school and each teacher.”

According to Lao, the spectacular PISA outcomes can also be attributed to experienced teachers: “The average age of Estonian teachers is high but they are tech-savvy at the same time. Teachers are well educated themselves. More than 70% of teachers hold a Master’s degree or equivalent – a higher proportion than the OECD average. They have a strong methodological and didactic theoretical background.”

Estonia has managed to achieve high PISA results across the whole social spectrum – good results in school do not depend on the socio-economic background of the students. In fact, years ago, the PISA method helped to recognise the weaknesses of the education system and address them specifically – the low performance of weaker learners had a considerable effect on the overall results. 

Thus, Innove has led a consistent effort to create a better learning environment for weaker and special needs pupils; improving their learning experience has boosted the overall results as well. 

Estonia has developed a unique nationwide network of education counselling services. 15 Innove Pathfinder centres offer free counselling to adults involved in children’s education – parents, teachers, and support specialists. Due to the geographical distance, e-speech therapist and e-education counselling services have been made available online as well.

The aim of Education Nation is to take the services of the state and EdTechs to other countries in order to increase the quality of education and to bring personalised education as close as possible to the learner. Estonia wants to be the first country to offer education (micro)services born out of a public-private partnership.

Since it is necessary to test and measure results to assess different teaching methods and approaches, Innove has developed e-tasks and diagnostic tests for schools to assess progress in different subjects. 

There are also digital testing options to measure the general skills of students. Digital grading enables teachers and learners to get fast feedback during the learning process and quickly adapt to personal needs, thus saving time for learners and teachers alike. Innove aims to provide digital grading solutions in all subjects by 2023.

It takes a village

Education is a topic that touches most people in society and Estonians are eager to be part of the discussion, as well as chip in if needed. The motivation of pupils and families plays a big role – Estonians have always believed that education is the fastest road to success. 

The spring of 2020 will be remembered in many families as a time when learning and work moved into the home. A challenge and an opportunity at the same time. There is finally an understanding that all of the digital education solutions developed over the last decades are not simply ‘nice-tohave’ additions to classroom teaching but rather a true lifeline.

Professor Marju Lauristin Marju Lauristin is an Estonian politician, former Member of the European Parliament, and Minister of Social Affairs. , a lead expert in Estonia’s education strategy 2035, was pleased to see that an educational environment with individual learning paths is no longer a utopian dream: “The unexpected closure of schools accelerated the cracks in the shell of the education system and the learner-centred process materialised overnight from vision papers into the lives of hundreds of thousands of families and created a new cooperation network between students, teachers, education designers, and parents. The dream of a self-leading learner and teachers/parents who guide them smartly has received a realistic framework due to these experiences.”

How to make Estonia’s experience an international success story?

Estonia aims to bring quality education to all learners regardless of his/ her access to education or possible special needs. This is already possible in Estonia but the worldwide situation is far from ideal. 

So, Estonia wants to initiate educational innovation globally. However, Estonia is too small to develop educational services for even its own 150 000 pupils and 70 000 students. The startup model, using Estonia’s schools in pilots and as a testing bed with the ambition of scaling globally, is the way to go.

Birgit Lao has shared the Estonian public education model with many governments worldwide during her consultations on building up education systems, to create sustainable teacher training or improve the inclusion of special needs students in education in Eastern Europe and beyond: “Also during the COVID-19 pandemic, some Arab countries like Kuwait have shown interest, even South America. Japan and Spain seem to be very interested.”

Public-private partnership in education

Estonia has created a well-functioning public-private partnership model in educational innovation, involving new approaches provided by private sector initiatives. Over the past 12 years, a stable startup community has developed in Estonia wherein services are provided by nearly 100 support organisations to bring out new solutions with potential for global growth. The Garage48 series of hackathons, the STARTER startup program for students, and the Prototron competition of Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol have been focused on education innovation strongly. In the last two years, almost 50 new prototypes in the field of education have been proposed, a dozen of which will reach learners soon.

Startup Estonia as a public initiative together with the Ministry of Education and Research has set EdTech as one of its focus activities with the aim of supporting existing EdTech startups and bringing 20 new companies to the market within 2 years. By 2020 there were 40 EdTech startups in Estonia with Lingvist, DreamApply, and Opiq as market leaders.

Global lockdown and worldwide remote learning have been a big opportunity for the growth of EdTech startups. “Within the first month, all

leading Estonian EdTech companies acquired tens of thousands of new users – some saw growth of over 400%. ALPA Kids and Clanbeat Education have increased their user numbers the most”, says Inga Kõue, EdTech Sector Project Lead at Startup Estonia. Both companies have grown with strong help from teachers and students through a co-creation programme. Startup Estonia, HITSA and Tallinn University Tallinn University is an Estonian higher education institution. are piloting a co-creation programme of 6 EdTech companies and 14 schools in 2020 to develop new solutions and improve the quality of education. Even during school lockdown, co-creation has continued and given a wider view of innovation to teachers who are involved in projects.

Kõue points out that the continued cooperation between the public and private sectors is the basis of Estonian educational success stories: “Quarterly roundtables of private entrepreneurs with the Minister of Education, integration of private and public sector e-services and integration of learning analytics are the keywords that ensure a strong and unified education system. The joint effort to ensure the availability of high-quality education also during distance learning has highlighted Estonia as an Education Nation.”

Back in the olden days, the railroad used to split every town into two. The "right side" of
the railroad tracks, and the "wrong side." Telliskivi used to be on the wrong side. How
did it manage to change sides?

Imagine walking through a "Steampunk Tallinn Tallinn, the largest city and capital of Estonia (population 440 000). " of the late 19th century – a mediaeval old
town as sedentary as a cemetery. As soon as you pass the Nunne gate, however, you'd
notice the industrial boom happening on the northern outskirts, around the Kalamaja
district.

Take note of the steam-powered ironclad flagship. It's the brand new railway station of
it's time. For your 19th century eyes, this is as modern and innovative as an office
a building filled with promising startups would look in today's age. As soon as you walk
past the railroad complex, you'll find a cow-filled meadow, in place of Pelgulinn.

In the next 50 years, dieselpunk will replace steampunk, and the first railroad workshops
will expand to become full-scale production facilities. Even revolutionary comrade
Mihhail Kalinin, who would later become “head of state” in Stalin's Russia, will find work
and a wife here in the early 20th century. After World War II, the factory complex will be
re-fitted for producing high-tech electronics, even for the Soviet space program. Is that
cool or what?

Now fast forward about nearly 100 years into the future to late-20th-century Tallinn Tallinn, the largest city and capital of Estonia (population 440 000). , and
imagine yourself walking through the Nunne gate and past the railway station again.

The steampunk and dieselpunk glory has faded into oblivion, almost as if it had never
been there in the first place. Now, there are only junkies, winos, pimps, and whores
hanging around: “Hey, boss! Can I borrow a cigarette? Got any change?”

You can feel shivers down your spine as you walk through the chaotic flea market
occupying part of the former railroad workshops. Instead of pastoral fields, there is the
decaying Pelgulinn, a wooden slum from the early 20th century. This time, if an
the individual looks like a hipster around here, it is due to poverty, not fashion. Ah, yes, it is
the wrong side of the railroad tracks indeed...

Oh, and you can’t walk into the now buzzing Telliskivi! Despite being half abandoned
and waiting for the inevitable wrecking ball, it’s guarded by grumpy elder men who have
authority to decide who can and cannot enter. (You’d better be nice to them!) Even still,
they won’t let you in. It's private property, and you are a stranger after all, aren’t you?

At the end of the day, that wrecking ball never showed up. Instead, in the early 2000s,
the first hippies snuck in. From their viewpoint, Telliskivi was on the right side of the
railroad tracks! Of course, it was the landlord's conscious plan to lure them in with
cheap rent for studios. These hipsters didn’t mind the decay. On the contrary... they
found it inspirational!

Now, you would be able to pass the grumpy gatekeepers without any explanation, and
sneak through the barely-illuminated territory toward some distant noises around the
corners. You would see some folks smoking by some door, and smell the sweet leaf...
You knew that you were there!

Hippies, punks, garage rockers, metal heads, skaters, indie kids, and nu-ravers alike
turned the tide for Telliskivi, pushed the wrong side of the railroad tracks further north,
and got slowly kicked out one by one as more established creatives and institutions
started moving in by the 2010s.

Here you are, in the middle of the well-illuminated square between a live music bar,
Asian restaurant, food truck, and an office building with a culture club upstairs...
wondering just how this magical place came to be true. Well, you can blame the railroad
tracks.