Country pillars
The ESI measures countries’ “distance to the ideal” performance. This ideal performance is chosen as the highest achieved by any country over a period of 7 years. The ideal performance is scaled to be 100 and the scores of all countries are then computed and compared to that. Basis of the ESI are 15 individual indicators from various international datasets. The scores are calculated across countries at the indicators’ level. The scores are then averaged at the various layers and finally the Index score is formed. To illustrate, an Index (or pillar, sub-pillar etc.) score of 65 suggests that the country has reached 65% of the ideal performance. Thus, there is still 35% (100-65) room for improvement. A score of 100 corresponds to achieving the ‘frontier’, that is an aspirational target performance for that indicator. A score of 0 corresponds to a lowest-case performance. This page shows specific information on the scores achieved by the chosen country across pillars, sub-pillars and indicators. Below, you can find a short commentary on country’s skills system performance over time and the ESI 2024 scores.
Estonia: 2024 scores and progress over time
Estonia ranked 7th of 31 countries in the European Skills Index in 2024, with a total score of 64.8. At the pillar level, it ranked 3rd in Skills Development (score: 68.3), 16th in Skills Activation (score: 63) and 13th in Skills Matching (score: 63.5).
The highest-ranking indicators of Estonia, in comparison with other countries, are Reading, maths & science scores (aged 15) (516, rank 1st) and Over-qualification rate (tertiary graduates) (12.2%, rank 2nd). On the other hand, its weakest indicators are Low-wage workers (ISCED 5-8) (16.8%, rank 30th) and Recent graduates in employment (77.4%, rank 28th).
Over the last seven years the overall rank of Estonia has increased from 10th place in 2017, an increase of 3 places. In that time, its overall score has increased from 54.6 to 64.8. The indicators that have improved the most (in terms of their normalised scores, and accounting for indicator directions) are Recent training (11.9% in 2017 to 21.1% in 2024), and Activity rate (aged 20-24) (63.1% in 2017 to 74.7% in 2024). The indicators that have shown the greatest declines are Low-wage workers (ISCED 5-8) (14.2% in 2017 to 16.8% in 2024), and Reading, maths & science scores (aged 15) (524.3 in 2017 to 515.6 in 2024).
Note that these figures may refer to imputed data points.