Education, between strikes and new legislation
With teachers on strike, Senate passes education legislation aimed at an in depth reform of the system.
Roxana Vasile, 23.05.2023, 14:00
The Senate, as the decision-making parliamentary body
in this case, passed the new education laws with a majority. The parties in the
ruling coalition, the National Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party and
the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, supported the two bills
for undergraduate and higher education, saying the measures adopted will reform
the education system. A system that is plagued by acute problems about which teachers,
parents, pupils and students have been warning for years and which at best have
only been superficially tackled by the various ministers that have held the
post, if not actually made worse!
A teacher by profession, president Klaus Iohannis
launched a project called Educated Romania, which, after being debated for five
years, is now being put into practice in the form of the new education
legislation, which education minister Ligia Deca, who worked on the
presidential project, says it addresses current and long-term challenges:
The education package is an ambitious but achievable
project, a better future for all children and young people in Romania. The
undergraduate education law reached the final vote and it is meant to address
existing and future challenges so that education can once more become the
foundation of a value-based society. Fairness, high-performance, investment,
respect and security are some of the key words which the undergraduate
education law has translated into coherent and predictable measures.
The undergraduate education law aims to reduce school
drop-out rates, while the higher education law seeks, among others, to support
the cooperation between Romanian and other European universities. Professionalising
the teaching career, improving access to early education, reducing functional
illiteracy, adapting programmes to the labour market, modernising testing and
evaluation methods and increasing support for underprivileged children are some
of the other goals of the new legislation.
Opposition senators, however, believe the two new laws
will never solve existing problems, so they voted against them and will even
bring the legislation before the Constitutional Court. Save Romania Union senator
Irineu Durau:
We could not vote for a law that simply leaves the
status of teachers at a shameful level, that only shows that today’s Power does
not care about education. There won’t be any teachers left to provide education
around the country. 20% of today’s teachers are about to retire and only 5% are
young.
Over 70% of teachers decided to continue on Tuesday
the general strike started a day earlier, after a long series of protests they
say no one paid attention to. On Monday, the labour ministry decided to launch
for public debate an emergency order to raise the salaries of auxiliary and
non-teaching staff and to provide financial bonuses for beginner teachers.
Still unhappy, trade unions said they would not give up the protest until
government provides a credible solution to their demands, especially
financial ones. (CM)
