Amendments to the Education Law

Presented as a priority for the current Government of Romania, alongside public healthcare, the education sector remains subject to frequent changes. For the past 25 years, each government has tried to improve the system, but all have lacked a clear medium or long-term strategy to address its severe under-financing.

Mihai Pelin, 10.04.2014, 12:49

Presented as a priority for the current Government of Romania, alongside public healthcare, the education sector remains subject to frequent changes. For the past 25 years, each government has tried to improve the system, but all have lacked a clear medium or long-term strategy to address its severe under-financing.

The Education Law has been once again changed recently, under an emergency government ordinance seeking to bring it in line with a Constitutional Court requirement concerning the tenure of teachers. PM Victor Ponta said this emergency ordinance is good news for more than 3 thousand teachers.

The changes, applicable immediately, were designed to enable the teachers having passed their tenure exams in the past 6 years with grades above 7, and who are employed on temporary contracts, may be assigned permanent posts. The decision is to be taken by the relevant county school inspectorate, based on two criteria. The first one is whether the respective post is vacant, and the second has to do with the viability of a post, namely with whether a post will exist throughout a four-year education cycle.

The recent changes to the Education Act were prompted by a complaint filed by a teacher with the Constitutional Court of Romania. According to the plaintiff, Art. 253 in the old text of the law made it possible for teachers to be assigned tenured positions on preferential criteria, based on the connections they had.

Although authorities claim education is a national priority, Romania is among the last EU member states in terms of the budget earmarked for this sector. In 2011, education got 2.7% of the GDP, in 2012 nearly 3%, and last year close to 3.2%. In contrast, in 2011 Iceland allotted 7.9% of its GDP to public education, Denmark 7.8% and Cyprus 7.2%.