Financing for equity in pre-primary education
1. Education resources to subnational governments
2. Education resources to institutions
3. Education resources to students and families
4. Social policies and family support programmes
Introduction
Key financing indicators (UIS Data)
The official entrance age to pre-primary education is 3 (UIS 2023 estimates). The net enrolment rate for pre-primary for both sexes is 86.32% (UIS 2023 estimates). No data is found regarding the number of years of compulsory pre-primary education granted in legal frameworks
Governance
According to the 2025 Early Childhood Education Act, pre-primary education funding is mainly the responsibility of local authorities (municipalities). The Ministry of Education and Research is positioned in an oversight/supervision role rather than as the direct allocator of preschool operating budgets.
Tuition-free status
No data is found regarding the number of years of free pre-primary education granted in legal frameworks.
1. Education resources to subnational governments
The 2025 Early Childhood Education Act describes a mixed public funding framework: municipal budget financing for municipal preschools, state-budget support to local authorities specifically for teachers’ continuing education, Estonian language studies, and for purchasing teaching materials, and a mechanism for ensuring a municipal place in a private preschool under defined funding rules, including a cap on the private preschool attendance fee at the municipal level when a municipal place is ensured there. Equity is explicitly addressed through the possibility to differentiate attendance fees and catering expenses based on family size and socio-economic background.
2. Education resources to institutions
According to the 2025 Early Childhood Education Act, municipal preschools are subsidised through local authority budget funding. It does not establish a separate national equity grant to preschools, but it embeds equity-targeting through the legal option for municipalities to adjust attendance fees and catering expenses on socio-economic and related grounds, within the fee cap (as mentioned in Section 1).
3. Education resources to students and families
There is no Ministry of Education and Research-administered package of financial aid for parents linked specifically to participation in pre-primary education, but municipalities operate their own cost-reduction schemes. For example, the City of Tallinn offers exemptions from the municipal kindergarten place fee for low-income families, for families with two or more children attending a municipal kindergarten, and for children with identified special educational needs based on an external counselling team’s recommendation.
4. Social policies and family support programmes
The Social Insurance Board administers a wide range of family and disability-related benefits, such as child allowance, guardianship allowance, and study allowance for students with disabilities, but their eligibility, purpose, and design are not linked to enrolment or participation in pre-primary education, and are mainly oriented toward school-age or upper secondary students.
This profile has been reviewed by Hasso Kukemelk.
