Investments in Education Quality
The findings of a recent report published by World Vision Romania Foundation
Christine Leșcu, 24.12.2014, 13:46
With concerns regarding the quality of education deepening recently, particularly among civil society, the “World Vision” Romania Foundation ran a survey of parent and child perceptions of school. Entitled “The Quality of Education,” the survey covered 157 schools in rural and disadvantaged areas in six counties, and unfortunately its conclusions confirm some of the informal debates within society. For instance, in spite of common perceptions, almost 90% of the schools are equipped with specialized labs, however they are only used in 10% of the cases. As expected, the most frequently used labs are the IT ones.
Moreover, only half of the students get to use the computers and little more than one-third of them have Internet access. On the other hand, one of the positive elements is the number of classrooms, which is generally adequate. Only a small number of schools are double-shift schools, and the majority of them only having morning classes. As for the involvement of parents in the education process, the survey reports a paradox: although in rural communities school is kept in high regard and people are generally happy with the teaching and learning process, parents are not really familiar with the details of school life, as we found out from Serban Iosifescu, coordinator of the survey and the president of ARACIP, the Romanian Agency for Undergraduate Education Quality Assurance. He also gave us more details about the findings of this survey:
“We found that each student regularly does homework every day for at least three subjects. Eighty percent of the students say that they spend more than half of the duration of a class listening to the explanations given by the teacher. Of the factors that stimulate the learning process, the least frequent in our schools has to do with how knowledge is applied in real-life situations and with the possibility of making connections between pieces of information. In every school there is at least one teacher who makes correlations between various subjects, but generally only one, rather than all teachers, as should be the case. Another positive element that we found was that teachers give support and feedback to children. The evaluation methods have also changed. School assessments are used for corrective measures, but less so for identifying the causes of school under-performance or for improving students’ motivation for learning.”
All these findings enabled the authors of the “World Vision” survey to draw certain conclusions.
“Teachers focus on presenting information, rather than on making sure that students acquire knowledge. Student autonomy is rather low, the education process is still defined as passing on information and the assessment tends to focus more on the cognitive side, and less on the behavioral aspect.”
Apart from not knowing exactly what their children do at school, during classes, one in three parents says they are not consulted on the matter of optional subjects. The same is true for nearly half of the pupils. Another critical problem is school dropout. A lot of children drop out of school or skip classes frequently either because they work to help support their families, or because they have other personal problems that schools are not equipped to deal with.
“A major concern is the lack of guidance and counseling services, and we have many pupils who said they never benefited from such services. There are also a large number of absences, known to parents and students. The main cause for this is related to problems in the respective families, rather than to their possible discontent with school. A large majority of students and parents believe children must complete their education, but the percentage of those who say they will not carry on studying is 35%, double the national average. This early dropout rate is closely tied to the family’s economic and education level.”
The dropout rate is also tied to the work that some children provide in their own households. One in ten children does this in Romania, according to the World Vision survey. In fact, school dropout has an impact not only at a personal level, but also at an economic one, reveals a survey conducted by UNICEF and called “The Cost of Insufficient Investment in Education in Romania.”
Luminita Costache, an expert with the organization, explains the costs of school dropout:
“Over one’s lifetime, the cost of early dropout ranges between 100 thousand and 1.1 million euros for each person. These figures are included in various country reports, not only for Romania. The overall costs of early school dropout for Romania equal 0.9% of the GDP. At individual level, each additional year in school reduces unemployment risks by 8.2%.”
Given that Romania already earmarks to education a smaller portion of its GDP than the 6% laid down in a “National Pact on Education,” the long-term consequences are hardly positive. Here is Luminita Costache again:
“We tried to put together several scenarios, like what would happen if Romania kept the current level of investments in education and what would happen if we increased the investments to 6% of the GDP. So far Romania has earmarked 4% to this sector, including private education expenses, not only the budget resources. If we keep this level of investment, the targets in the Europe 2020 Strategy will not be reached. In the second scenario, if we increase the education budget to 6% of the GDP by 2025, the targets in Europe 2020 will be reached, the PISA test scores will reach the OECD average, and one additional school year will lead to an increase of the GDP by 2.7 to 2.95% in 10 years. In other words, Romania is set to lose between 12 and 17 billion euros in the coming 10 years unless it invests more in education.”
What the authors of the two survey reports indirectly propose is on the one hand a far-reaching reform of Romania’s approach to education funding, and on the other hand a change in the relationship between school, parents and students.
