The 3rd wave of the Covid-19 pandemic prompts authorities to extend students’ spring break.
Just like the healthcare system, Romania’s public education sector has been neglected for years, and the COVID-19 pandemic only added to its suffering. A victim of underfunding and of the lack of vision of successive ministers, education has been one of the Cindarellas of the public sector. The novel coronavirus deepened the problems schools had already been struggling with.
Unlike other European countries, Romania chose to keep children at home for almost a year, opting for online learning, which students, parents and teachers were only discovering, hence the inevitable disruptions that accompanied the switch.
More than a few voices have warned that exclusively online learning is exhausting, inefficient and unsustainable in the long run. Many children, particularly in underprivileged communities, have been virtually excluded from the teaching process, simply because they lacked laptops or tablets or an internet connection.
Whereas the previous education minister Monica Anisie opted for online teaching, the incumbent minister sees things in a different light: in a recent interview to Radio Romania, Sorin Cîmpeanu admitted that Romanian public education is not prepared, in many respects, to operate exclusively online, and said schools must be the last to close down if the pandemic situation requires it. “School is a vital element. Absence from school entails substantial losses in all regards,” Sorin Cîmpeanu said in that interview.
Opened on February 8th after almost a year of distance learning, Romanian schools however risk being closed once again, as the COVID-19 3rd wave sweeps the country. To avoid this, minister Cîmpeanu has suggested an extended spring break, covering both the Catholic and Orthodox Easter holidays. Children will stay at home for a month, between April 2nd and May 4th, so as to reduce traveling during a period when experts expect the number of infections to peak.
As a result, except for senior secondary and high school students, the other school kids will finish the second semester on July 2nd, instead of June 18th. The national assessment at the end of secondary school will take place between July 5th and 8th.
However, the baccalaureate will be held as originally scheduled, with the written tests given face to face between June 28th and July 1st. University admission exams will take place, as usual, during the summer.
Schools will also remain open even in places where the COVID-19 infection rate is over 6 per thousand, and a switch to online learning will only be ordered in case of lockdown. (tr. A. M. Popescu)
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