Former Education Minister Daniel Funeriu on Monday criticized President Klaus Iohannis for the education situation, saying that after years of launching the Educated Romania project, today only “two results are visible: teachers with knives in classrooms and the first general strike in 18 years”. . He also said yes the current strike in educationit is the result of years when education was run by people without prestige and economic measures against teachers, according to News.ro.

“President Iohannis promised us an educated Romania 9 years ago, and today we see two results. Teachers with knives in their classrooms and the first general strike in 18 years, this is the image of the educated Romanian brand of Iohannis. This is the only political key in which we can read the situation,” said Daniel Funeriu on Prima News’ “Country Project: Romania” show.

He showed that “today we see a government with a 70% majority in the parliament, which does not have any political or economic situation, on the contrary, it is a good economic situation and which is unable to stop the teachers’ strike.”

Funeriu says the strike is the result of years of education being run by people without prestige

“This strike is legitimate because it is about salaries, about the law that passed through the parliament, but there is another thing (..) It is about the fact that the environment in which teachers work today is a much more toxic environment than that , where teachers worked in 2010. Today, because education has not been ruled by those with the intellectual weight to rule, the school is ruled by the king of the child and the parents who demand what they should not claim, and the teacher no longer has tools – he does his duty.” – said Funeriu.

According to the former minister of education, the current strike “is the result of years when education was run by people without prestige and economic measures to the detriment of teachers.”

“Today, the salary of teachers is about 22 billion lei, the average salary in OECD countries, rich countries will be about 23,000 euros per year. To reach the OECD average, Romania will have to spend one billion euros more on teacher salaries, which will mean about a third of the budget for special pensions. But when Romania is headed by a special pensioner at the level of the prime minister, the priority should be special pensions, not teachers’ salaries,” said Daniel Funeriu.

He admitted that he had delivered a message to Prime Minister Chuke a few days ago. “I asked him to call me because I felt what was happening, I was worried when I saw that the pressure was from the base. He didn’t call me,” he said.

About the ways to solve the crisis in education, Funeriu said that “it is necessary to offer a perspective, a professional one, because today, because of what was legislative, we are in a situation where the teacher no longer has any rights in the classroom and is left without tools.

“They legislated the dictatorship of mediocrity in the Romanian school, the dictatorship of the periphery. Today’s teachers no longer have the tools to teach the basics,” he said.

Funeriu also showed that the second thing is to offer teachers a good economic perspective.

“This is not difficult to do when we have billions of euros from Europe, we have economic growth. But we have a big prioritization problem, these people prioritize their personal interests, when you have some PSD villainy combined in government with the PNL stupidity, the result will be an exponential growth of this horrible hearing sphere that sits like a gray shadow over Romania “, he added.

Two education laws from the president’s “Educated Romania” project were voted by the Senate on Monday, the first day of a general strike by education workers, and will be sent to President Klaus Iohannis for promulgation. Among the main changes are the possibility for senior schools to organize their own entrance exam after a national assessment for 50% of places and the introduction of religion as an optional subject at the undergraduate level for humanities students.