Estonia has a population of 1.3 million and this small country is ranked first in Europe and third in the world in the PISA science ranking. Ahead of Finland. Ahead of Japan. Ahead of every country in the DACH region.
The Estonian paradox
The remarkable thing about Estonia's results is that they are not a product of privileged conditions. Estonian teachers are under the same pressure as their colleagues in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. 92 % have experienced burnout (Arenguseire Keskus, 2023). More than half (53.7 %) are over 50 years old. The average working week is over 50 hours, with a legal norm of 35. Almost half of teachers under 30 plan to leave the profession within five years (OECD TALIS 2024).
The „teacher crisis“ is not an Estonian phenomenon. It affects the whole of Europe. The difference lies in how Estonia has reacted to it.
Instead of waiting for more funding, more staff or more time, Estonia has reorganised its own teaching. The national curriculum has been consistently focussed on inquiry-based learning - learners do science instead of just hearing about it. But a curriculum document alone does not teach a single lesson. Teachers needed tools, materials and methodological support to implement the change in everyday life.
This is exactly where Praktikal comes in.
From curriculum to practice
Praktikal is an Estonian STEM education company that combines three areas that are treated separately in most schools: physical experiment kits, a digital learning platform and methodological support for teachers. The result is a complete ecosystem - open the box, log in, teach.
The spread speaks for itself. In the 2021/22 school year, 46 Estonian schools used the solution. By 2025/26, the number had risen to 303, which is around 75 % of all eligible schools in the country. Not a pilot project. Not a handful of tech-savvy pioneers. Three quarters of the market in four years.
Today, over 30,000 students are learning with Praktikal's research-based activities. Teachers report saving 10 hours per week by using Praktikal. The time previously spent creating their own materials, searching for experiments that work and assembling equipment from various cabinets. The platform offers over 150 ready-to-teach activities in physics and chemistry, each prepared as a complete teaching scenario: Getting started, experiments, guiding questions and discussion prompts - all planned through.
The schools renew their licences. Year after year.
What a lesson actually looks like
Numbers are important. But how do they actually work in the classroom?
Let's take the collection „Practical Thermodynamics“ - 7 subject areas, 24 lessons, 6 main modules.
The entire course is driven by a single provocative question: Could the heat from the summer be stored in the ground and used for heating in winter?
On the first day, the learners cannot answer this question. They can only guess. But over the following weeks, they gradually learn the basic physics so that they can calculate the answer themselves.
It starts with thermometers - not just with reading them, but with the question of what a thermometer actually measures. The students discover that thermometers do not „measure“ temperature, but achieve a thermal equilibrium with their environment. Then they move on to the microscopic level: in simulations, they observe how molecules speed up and slow down. Suddenly, temperature is no longer an abstract number. It becomes the average speed of invisible particles.
From there, the students follow how heat spreads through aluminium and iron rods. They investigate why beach sand is scorching hot on the surface but cool a few centimetres below - a question that leads directly to underground heat storage. They build model houses with replaceable insulation, install heating elements and measure what happens when the roof insulation fails. The thermometer tells the story.
This is followed by calorimetry. The students heat aluminium cylinders, immerse them in water and measure the final temperature. The heat given off by the metal corresponds to the heat absorbed by the water. Not approximately, but exactly. They calculate the specific heat capacity themselves from these measured values. Joules become euros when they use local electricity prices to determine the actual cost of a hot shower.
In the final module, students calculate how large a rock reservoir would have to be to store enough summer heat for the winter. The results are astounding but not impossible. And now they understand why.
This is not a recipe to follow, it is a challenge. Learners observe, hypothesise, experiment, analyse and draw conclusions in a complete research cycle. Each concept serves a purpose. Each experiment answers part of the big question.
The numbers behind the method
Estonia's PISA results are no coincidence. They are achieved in classrooms where learners do science instead of just watching it. The data from Praktikal's ecosystem backs this up:
- 303 schools throughout Estonia - 75 % of all eligible schools
- Over 30,000 learners with structured research-based learning
- 10.4 hours per week Time savings for teachers thanks to ready-to-teach materials
- Over 150 activities in physics and chemistry, each with complete methodological support
Pedagogical research confirms this approach. The combination of theory and practice promotes higher-level thinking (Barak & Shakhman, 2008; He, Xie & Lavonen, 2022). Active experimentation generates lasting knowledge - not just situational interest that evaporates when the break bell rings (Abrahams, 2009; Renninger et al., 2019). When all learners have their own equipment, collaboration is no longer an option, but a matter of course.
What this means for schools in the DACH region
Physics in Munich is the same as in Tallinn. So is the disinterest of many learners and the overload of many teachers. The methodology that made Estonia's results possible is not culture-specific - it is based on how people learn.
Koolest Solutions GmbH brings the complete Praktikal ecosystem to the DACH region: experiment sets that are already in use at German schools, the digital learning platform and the pedagogical framework that 300 Estonian schools rely on every day. No translation. An adaptation - developed for the reality of German-speaking classrooms.
Estonia has proven that a small country with scarce resources and an ageing teaching force can lead the whole of Europe in the natural sciences.
The secret wasn't more money. It was better tools - built on real inquiry-based learning, designed to make life easier for teachers and to deepen students' learning.
The question is no longer whether this approach works. The question is whether your school is prepared to use it.
Koolest Solutions GmbH is the DACH distributor for Praktikal. To bring the experiment sets, the digital platform and the methodological support to your school, visit our Praktikal page.
Sources: OECD PISA 2022; OECD TALIS 2024; Arenguseire Keskus (2023); Barak, M. and Shakhman, L. (2008); He, H., Xie, K. and Lavonen, J. (2022); Abrahams, I. (2009); Renninger, K. A. et al. (2019); Praktikal company figures (Feb. 2026).
