The Romanian education system stays afloat

Secondary school graduates can finally breath a sigh of relief as the Education Ministry has made available the list of high schools they will attend as of September.

Florentin Căpitănescu, 16.07.2013, 13:49

As many as 145 thousand secondary school graduates have found out which high school they will attend as of September, after the Education Ministry completed the first stage of the computerized distribution of seats. According to data supplied by the ministry, almost 52% of the students opted for theoretical high schools while 48% of them went for vocational ones. A balance seems to have been reached in this respect, against the background of accusations leveled against the Romanian education system over the past few years, that it only encouraged the formation of ‘theoreticians’ to the detriment of students who could learn a ‘proper job’, as it had happened in the communist era. The high schools top ten with the highest admission grade is dominated by Bucharest that has 5 high schools in this top. The Black Sea town of Constanta comes next with two high schools, followed by Brasov, in central Romania, Craiova in the south and Cluj in the north-west, with one high school each. The about 500 secondary-school graduates who have failed to make it to any high school after the July selection made by the ministry, have the opportunity to register for a second distribution of high school seats. To this end students have to submit their applications between July 17th and 22nd. The results will be made public on July 25th.

As far as the Baccalaureate exam is concerned, about 55% of students passed the exams during the July session, as compared to only 43% in 2012. As expected, this year’s Baccalaureate was surrounded by the usual drama, being marred by a series of fraud attempts, prevented by exam supervisors and, in some cases, even by police officers. On the other hand, what happened during the July session of the Baccalaureate proves that the drastic surveillance measures still don’t discourage fraud attempts both on the side of students and teachers. However 55% is an acceptable Baccalaureate success rate that leaves room for moderate optimism in the Romanian education.