Võru Kesklinna Kool is a lovely public basic school in the center of a town called Võru in the Southeast corner of Estonia. Established in 1974 the school has had its doors open for our students already for five decades. We have become one of the main basic schools in Võru. Currently we have almost 500 students from the age of 7 to 15 studying in our school and the total number has been growing over the recent years. Our students are in good hands. The staff – consisting of teachers, management and other vital personnel who all work together as one to keep the school running – is all in all about 50 professional people.

Our focus has always been on being able to adapt with and quickly respond to the positive changes in society and to flow with the changing times. However, it is also our concern that the riches of the Estonian cultural heritage and our traditional good values are kept alive and handed over to our young. A special list of core values that constantly guide and encourage us in our school includes responsibility, teamwork, caring for others, health and interest for learning.

Our school building has been recently renovated and is equipped with up-to-date technology in a comfortable modern environment to support learning and development of each and every student, as well as to provide excellent working conditions for the staff. We encourage our students to realise from early on that learning and education is about knowledge and wisdom, not about grades.

Our school has joined with different projects for making it truly the best place for studying. We are members of Eco-Schools, Anti Bullying School, Active Schools and Enterprising School. We have been titled a “Positive Value Based School” by the Ethic Centre of Tartu University. The award has come as a result of rigorous work and is a huge recognition for us.

In order to motivate students and build up a deeper community feeling we have several activities that support traditional learning. As one of our school’s values is health, we have set up a unique long break during lunch period when students have enough time to spend some time outside the building, have some fresh air and walk or play with friends. An active period of 45 minutes between classes in the middle of the school day serves to benefit children’s overall well-being. Recently we have also added an extra subject into our curriculum, which is called “Huvitund” meaning that students can find out and decide what they are most interested in and join a particular class according to what they choose. We have a variety of different interesting classes to offer starting with creativity and ending with coding. The programme enables to make the curriculum more versatile and at the same time develop different qualities and skills of the students.

Music plays an important role in our school. Students really like to express themselves through song and performing. Currently we have four music classes where the special emphasis is on children’s musical education. As a huge output of musical work done in our school, we have brought a brand new school musical on a big stage every year in December for the last four years. This year our school musical was nominated in the category of ‘’Heategu kogukonnale” (A Good Deed for the Community) by the programme Enterprising School.

We constantly keep the vision of Võru Kesklinna Kool in mind. Our goal is to offer quality education in an up-to-date and safe learning and working environment. We are a happy school family and we will continue working on making Võru Kesklinna Kool the best place to study in!