The Foundation For The Defense Of Citizens Against State Abuses (FACIAS) points out a number of serious problems in the Romanian education system, which the Ministry of Education cannot solve and which make education the worst crisis of the last thirty years. At this rate we are certainly heading for a catastrophe.
The opening of the school year has shown us the scale of the disaster and the fact that the current minister is completely out of his depth.
The failure to respect the right to education, a right recognised by the Constitution, is an unacceptable abuse and FACIAS calls for the immediate resignation of Minister Monica Anisie.
FACIAS presents today a second reason why Minister Monica Anisie should resign, which shows the unprecedented situation of Romanian education.
The eternal problem of textbooks is even worse this year, in the particular context in which school has started.
According to the latest data, 12,953 units are operating in the green scenario, 4,391 units in the yellow scenario and 312 units in the red scenario.
In Bucharest, not a single school is in the green scenario, with more than 600 in the yellow scenario and around 30 in the red scenario.
Pupils have been forced to start school without the necessary textbooks, despite the promise of Minister Anisie, who has given assurances that most textbooks will be available. At this hour we are even talking about textbooks for which the tender has not even been completed, although the procurement procedure began in December 2019, such as the 7 types of textbooks for grade VIII.
Although many students are forced to learn online, the electronic versions of all textbooks are not available either.
For the other grades, textbooks are available, but not all students will receive them physically from day one, and the total need for textbooks at this date is almost 4 million copies.
We're talking about dozens of textbook titles that are being re-evaluated following appeals by publishers, who in turn say the blame lies with the Education Ministry because of cumbersome procedures that have been unchanged for years.
The Ministry of Education and Research has procrastinated in organising textbook auctions, and we are now in a very delicate situation, as any day when pupils do not have the necessary learning materials is a wasted school day. Eighth-graders need textbooks and they need certainty in the organisation of the national assessment!
It is important to note that the Ministry of Education has had the school curriculum up to and including 8th grade approved and published since 2017, so they could have launched the tenders 3 years ago for textbooks for the entire secondary school without any delays year after year.