STUDENTS’ COPING IN DIFFERENT TYPES OF SCHOOLS AT THE BASIC LEVEL OF COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOLS IN ESTONIA

The number of students dropping out from the basic level of comprehensive schools has increased during the last years. The current situation has led to a conclusion that the educational system needs to be reorganized in order to support the formation of constructive students' coping strategies in academic environment. Arising from that the aim of the current study was to find out how students assess their coping at the basic level of different types of schools (4th-9th grades). Because of linguistic and cultural diversity in Estonia, schools can be divided into three groups: Estonian, Russian and bilingual (Estonian-Russian) schools. The results of the study revealed the differences in students' evaluations on grouped indicators characterizing coping at different levels of school. The students of the second level in basic school (4th-6th grades) did not give higher evaluations to their coping and peer relations than the students of the next level. The students of 7th-9th grades gave lower evaluations to other coping components, the indices were worryingly lower. This is the level where dropping out has its highest rate. Therefore it may be said that students' coping strategies are the lowest in the 7th-9th grade, which may be one of the causes of dropping out. There were significant differences in coping, discipline and some other indicators of Estonian, Russian and bilingual school types. According to the results it may be concluded that students' coping strategies grow worse at the third level of basic school and the students of all types of schools have coping problems.