Inglehart (1990, 2005) views values as man’s reactions to changes in the environment. According to his approach values develop in the process of socialisation. Values are divided into the following groups: traditional, modernist and postmodernist. According to Rokeach (1973) values constitute and element of culture, an imagination of the wished-for, that might not be directly expressed in human behaviour. Based on Rokeach' and Schwartz' (1992) questionnaires Kalmus & Vihalemm (2004) have found that Estonians consider the most important values to be health, strong family, peace in the world, clean environment, happiness, and country’s security. In accordance with the results of the Estonian Science Foundation project Intelligence of infants and toddlers and its dependence on the rearing environment one can say that parents consider most important that their children are healthy, happy and smart (Veisson, 2001). The aim of the current research was to compare school values from the perstective of students, teachers, school managers and parents. Keywords: school values, students, parents, teachers, school managers

In the framework of the state financed project of Tallinn University School as developmental environment and students’ coping (2003-2007, project leader M. Veisson) data was collected in 2004 from 3838 students, 2048 parents, 620 teachers and 120 school managers and in 2006 from 500 students. As one part of the questionnaire 14 school values had to be ranked.

It appeared that students and parents think that school considers most important to be academic success, whereas teachers gave it a 3rd-4th place and school managers only the 10th place. Teachers and school managers consider most important students' security at school and second, honesty. Students and parents too think that honesty is the third value at school. Students consider politeness and parents consider discipline as suitable for the 2nd place. Students health is valued by teachers and school managers relatively highly (in case of both groups the 3rd placement). Unfortunately, students themselves and their parents think that health is not very highly valued at school (10th placement). Joy of school got the last placement among values both in case of students and school managers. School managers, however, placed joy of school on the 7th position. Tolerance and helpfulness remained rather in the back of the hierarchy in case of both studies with students. It appeared also that values in different school cultures differ to quite a lot. Analysed were also Estonian and Russian language students’ cultural and gender-related differences in school values.