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 one of the worst crises 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.
In order to support the above FACIAS will present in the coming days ten objective reasons why a new management is needed in the Ministry of Education. These will be presented in detail, one per day, in the next ten days.
The first of the ten reasons is school transport, a problem that persists, even though its seriousness has long been reported.
In December 2019, FACIAS sent an open letter to the Romanian Prime Minister on this very issue, pointing out the difficulties faced by the more than 125,000 pupils who have to commute. Without the benefit of free transport they were either exposed to additional risks by using occasional transit, or even at risk of dropping out of school due to material deprivation that prevented them from getting to class.
The Ministry of Education should have taken all necessary steps, without pause, without excuses, without invoking other responsible parties, so that all pupils in Romania could get to school and exercise their constitutional right to education.
Now, the situation of pupils commuting to educational establishments is still uncertain, as the rules adopted by the Government at the proposal of the Ministry of Education are unclear and incomplete.
The procedure for settling the cost of transporting pupils, regulated by Government Decision 435/2020, does not correlate with the stipulations of Law 1/2011 and does not clarify certain aspects of these settlements. More specifically, it is not specified whether the provisions apply to all pupils or only to those who attend school in a place other than their place of residence, nor how this free transport will be paid.
The Ministry of Education is relieved of the responsibility of providing free transport for pupils, and only mentions the obligation of County Councils to make payments to transport operators.
These problems have also been raised by the Federation of Romanian Transport Operators (FORT), which has pointed out that, as things stand, road transport operators cannot provide free transport for pupils to schools.
FACIAS points out that, according to the provisions proposed by the Ministry of Education, it is very difficult to provide free transport for pupils commuting to educational establishments, and any disruption in the functioning of this system is equivalent to a violation of the fundamental right to education, provided for by the Romanian Constitution.