We are in a season of feverish administrative activity in pre-university education units across the country. In January and February, the “draft study plan” and “draft employment plan” are approved, two phrases that sound cold-bureaucratic, removed, uninteresting, but in which deep Balzac revelations are hidden, if we study them with all attention. The Romanian student benefits from a central interest in the education system, but not in any case, let’s get it right: he shows gold medals in national and international olympiads, but goes to higher education institutions in huge proportions outside, and is even often an example praise in the world’s top 100 universities, beaten by a hundredth of a point to get into our elite national colleges, but the merit of this remarkable effort lies in the child’s natural abilities, in the work of a meditative teacher or rare classroom, with a special pedagogical spirit, in financial and educational investment their parents, in general, anyone else less – in the order of decreasing public recognition of merits – of the political-administrative staff of the education system (the minister and his state secretaries, general and specialized inspectors from the territory). A newbie to the system or an outsider would step in here and say bluntly, “What about the teachers and principals, right?” This critical assessment is based on the prejudiced opinion that the entire educational system is formed from top to bottom as a monolith with only one face, mouth or brain, which is far from the truth, reality carries many nuances and intermediate categories: no, we are all water and earth, that is mud, although some of us are too similar to each other, to the point of indistinguishable, due to social behavior learned from years of “togetherness”. Most likely, a large part of teachers share the ethical responsibility for the real situation – we have education in Romania that is not everything at all! – but with those at the top of the hierarchy more there is hope for positive transformation, for progress, for evolution, for higher education of those who raised – it’s true, hope is as thin as a blade of grass, because the decision-making factor is not here – starting from the state of available teachers in the territory. The case of heads of educational units is more professionally and morally damaging than the situation with teachers as a group, of course, so infinite caution is recommended, but simply by working in schools together with students and colleagues, principals feel and understand much more realistically the profile of the graduates they prepare on average, the Romanian state than a ministerial bureaucrat who has either never taught in a public educational institution, or has done so for a long time and for a relatively short period of time, in high schools and elites, the significance is inconclusive for the entire national network. As a conclusion of the stage, Romanian education is divided not only internally from the point of view of the quality of the educational act, but also regarding its institutional course. The division is not only in the “highest party-state forums”, but also underlies the current hierarchy in the system, dysfunctional and with low legitimacy in everyday life (except fear, there is not much conviction or recognition of the currents of things).

It is against the background of these internal divisions that the double standard that I mentioned at the beginning of the article arises. Let’s analyze the “school plan”, the cause of many institutional confusions in the Romanian school. We are still learning in the Soviet architecture of the educational institutions built by the communist regime in Romania. Few schools were built under Romanian capitalism, and they are certainly not public, except for a small number. Even though we are in complete demographic decline, and fewer and fewer children are being born today, some of whom are emigrating with their parents to developed societies, we would expect that in the last 10-15 years we will have spacious classrooms without unnecessary objects. overcrowding. Today, the “decree” generation is rapidly approaching retirement age. Even those born in the first half of the 90s are no longer at the elementary school stage. We can easily organize classes of 15 students, a maximum of 20 in the city in 2024 (in the village we have been talking about a full-fledged demographic catastrophe for a long time – classes often cannot reach even the average value imposed by the Ministry of Education), just as and in European countries, which we aim to reach and which we have taken as a reference point. Existing large areas allow this to be done in most functional educational institutions. Except for the famous schools, where parents fight to get their children to the vaunted tree, others can accept students and place them as they wish. Despite this elementary observation, we have schools and secondary schools with more than 25 or even 30 students in classes (from 2020, amid the pandemic, the Romanian Parliament decided, with the slowness of an octogenarian ankylosis, to allow a numerically smaller number of schools than before) . Since 2007, hundreds, if not thousands, of educational institutions have been closed due to negative natural growth. Salaries in education have increased and even the costs per student have increased slightly. The minimum working limit of the class allows it to be organized with just over 10 students in the pre-university education law in both primary and high school. However, the same Romanian state, led officially and by law by politicians democratically elected by the Romanian people, which not only promises higher pensions and decent salaries for teachers, but also occasionally achieves them, puts pressure on school divisions to form classes with NUMBER maximum students provided by law. Why do this when the spending is done anyway, and in most cases we are not dealing with an administration that really cares about using public money wisely? We are talking about networks of great corruption that have engulfed the Romanian state and are still keeping it in limbo. We have a criminal plutocracy at the top of the state. How will investing in schools, in the form of smaller class sizes, hurt the state budget? It is hard to believe that we are talking about a huge price if we really love our people by flattering them on national days or in the midst of an election campaign. We love you beyond words, but we we don’t want let’s keep Romanian students in classes of 15, maximum 20 students, like in the civilized world. Moreover, although there are 22 to 24 students in an elementary school class according to current legislation, the number maximum however, honorable political figures of the Romanian state impose a number maximum 26 students when the children reach the 5th grade. Where does this hypothetical difference of 2-4 students per class come from when you go from primary to secondary education? The explanation is that, when crowding classes, in the historical conditions of an unprecedented demographic crisis at a younger age, let’s not forget, and taking into account only the maximum number of students in a class (why not the average according to the law?) economy is produced in a state with didactic norms and related frameworks. We have merit scholarships with scores below 5, due to many other types/tertypes invented recently, before the election year, when social scholarships are what are really needed and urgent in Romania, but we are stingy with how many students we enter into the class.

Thus we approach the draft staffing, the second hot topic at the beginning of the calendar year in schools. For many years, although we have institutes rigorous in theory, control and inspection, school inspectorates, those which, as their name suggests, checks schools, didactic norms, removed during competitions for the occupation of teaching departments, present in the system, twist, twist, gather, shorten, end in a rationally unspeakable Babylon, which confusing procedures deliberately exacerbate (where a dirty maneuver is desired, we can use legislation with many exceptions , like Swiss cheese, to muddy the waters even more), so that in July, when the respective competitions take place, the department directors, with the connivance of some personnel inspectors from the districts, arranged their chairs (as if they had ownership documents) put acquaintances, friends, relatives, colleagues and work colleagues, fellow pensioners, etc., to the competition, who will take these positions in September, because no one came to them. (and in fact in the spring and summer they illegally disappeared from the center’s report to suddenly appear legally in the fall). These deplorable practices, stubbornly practiced for decades, form another millstone around the neck of the quality of public education in Romania. In fact, recruiting new and good teachers into the system is not desirable, although it is necessary. They secretly fight for preservation, stagnation in a closed circle, us among ourselves, even though the defects and deficiencies of the system, which form a mountainous chain of evidence and testimony, have attained infamy, and there has been little measurable improvement, except in wages, the only definite aspect of the whole affair. _ Read the entire article and comment on it on Contributors.ro