Report: Mainly children of wealthier parents with a higher level of education participate in hobby education
In Estonia, hobby education is more accessible to children of more educated and wealthier parents and mainly in Harju, Tartu and Pärnu counties. Ensuring the accessibility of hobby education for children with special educational needs and more difficult socioeconomic backgrounds is a major challenge according to the Foresight Centre’s short report ‘Accessibility of hobby education in Estonia’.

Eneli Kindsiko, an expert at the Foresight Centre, said that socioeconomic and regional gaps characterise hobby education or participation in hobby schools in Estonia. “Hobby education is more accessible to children of parents who are wealthier and have higher education and more available to urban children – one in two attendees is a child from a city and one in three is a child from a rural area,” said Kindsiko. For example, in the 2023/24 academic year, there were 840 hobby schools operating in Estonia, 659 or 87% of which were located in Harju, Tartu or Pärnu counties.
Kindsiko hoped that elsewhere in Estonia, instead of hobby education, hobby activities are more common, such as various hobby groups taking place in schools, which encompass a broader, more varied and freer form of hobby-based activity. “Unfortunately, though, we lack data on the number of hobby activities and participation in them,” she said.
Referring to scientific research, the Foresight Centre notes in its short report that hobby education has a great preventive potential or ability to reduce expenditure on social, health and judicial systems in the future. For example, it has been found that each euro invested in the sports activities of so-called at-risk youths could save society 44 euros on average in the future.
The positive effect of hobby education results mainly from reducing deviant behaviour and teaching young people self-management skills. At the same time, dealing with children with special needs requires more time and skill and there is a severe shortage of competences related to the development of social skills and mental health support among the instructors and coaches of hobby schools in Estonia.
Hobby education can reduce the rate of school drop-outs as well. In Harju County, for example, the school drop-out rate is just 0.3% among those who attend hobby schools, while it is 2.3% among those who do not attend hobby schools. Additionally, data in Estonia shows that if the income of the child’s mother is low or less than 836 euros per month and the children attend hobby school, the likelihood that they drop out of school is three times smaller than in the case of children whose mother’s income is low and who do not attend hobby school (1% vs 3%).
“Hobby schools’ and hobby groups’ positive impact on school drop-outs results from the fact that young people are aided in developing self-management life skills; they can experience success and a positive communication environment, which is especially valuable for young people who lack success at school,” said Kindsiko.
In the short report ‘Accessibility of hobby education in Estonia’ (in Estonian), the Foresight Centre analysed the hobby education obtained in hobby schools that have an activity licence and are registered in the Estonian Education Information System. The short report is part of the Foresight Centre’s research stream ‘The Future of Spatiotemporal Accessibility of Public Services’. The purpose of the research stream is to map the availability of public services now and in the future and discern the most suitable future models of service provision.
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