Education and Science, Estonia, Forum, Innovations, Legislation, Technology

Photo: hm.ee

"We have very good examples of cooperation, yet we know little about each other still. Based on feedback from our partners I can affirm that signing an agreement on cooperation in research and technology would be very important for researchers, businesses and financers. It would also be a seal of quality confirming the government's support for cooperation," Reps said at the meeting with the Japanese minister whose portfolio puts him also in charge of education rebuilding.

Hayashi agreed that concluding such an agreement would help enliven cooperation between Estonia and Japan in research and technology and described the experience of Estonia in early learning of digital skills, which includes teaching pupils programming skills from ages 7-8, as very useful. Besides Hayashi was interested in Estonia's initiatives in robotics and entrepreneurship training, including the successful activity of student businesses, as well as cooperation of Estonian universities with businesses.

Reps said that one way of exchanging experience is by means of holding joint classes of Estonian and Japanese schools using e-solutions. Reps invited Hayashi to visit Estonia to continue the cooperation that has been started.

Over the past 26 years, Estonian research has proved its high quality in Europe and Estonian scientists have received a remarkably big number of grants. Relatively less has taken place in terms of cooperation with Japan, which makes support of the state in creating possibilities especially important.

The Estonian minister and secretary general of the Ministry of Education and Research Tea Varrak are visiting Japan from Sept. 27 to Oct. 3 to make preparations for concluding a bilateral agreement on cooperation in research and technology with Japan that would open up many new opportunities for Estonian researchers.

Reps also spoke at the EU-Japan Science Policy Forum in Kyoto on Saturday as the representative of the Council of the European Union. Held for the eighth time, the EU-Japan Science Policy Forum brought together policymakers and officials, heads of financing institutions, representatives of universities, scholars, entrepreneurs and scientific journalists from Europe and Japan in order to discuss evidence-based science, technology and innovation policy.