Romania Country Report Prepared by Mihai Enescu TERRA Mileniul III Foundation, Bucharest
1. Introduction 1.1. Main characteristics of the national education system In Romania, access to free education is guaranteed by Article 32 in the Constitution of Romania. Education is regulated and enforced by the Ministry of National Education. Kindergarten is optional under the age of six. Education is compulsory between the ages of 6 and 16 years old. The school educational cycle ends in the twelfth grade. In 2010, there were approximately 4.700 gymnasium schools (students aged between 11 and 15) in Romania [1]. Students are dealing with ICT starting from the Primary school, when they have 1 or 2 classes of introduction to computers. Regarding the school aged population, by level of education (excluding post-university education), almost a half (45%) of the school population is represented by the secondary level, followed by the primary level (grades I-IV) – 21.2%, pre-primary (17.6%), higher (14.1%) and post-secondary (2.1%) levels [5]. According to the same document, namely Statistical Yearbook 2012 [5], in 2012 there were 7204 schools in Romania, fewer than in 2007 (8484 units) with an approximate total of 3.8 million persons enrolled. Among them, approximately 2.6 million were pupils (from primary, secondary and high schools), 0.53 million were students and 0.67 million were children in kindergartens. Regarding the teaching staff from the pre-university level, a strong decreasing was reported for the last 20 years. In 1992, there were around 280.000 professors, while in 2012, there were only 220.000 [18]. In Romania, County School Inspectorates and National Agency for Quality Assurance in Pre-university Education (A.R.A.C.I.P.) are in charge with the external monitoring of all quality aspects in schools. County School Inspectorates are in charge with external monitoring visits and validation of the self-evaluation report drafted by each school. A.R.A.C.I.P. is responsible to conduct regularly (ones at each 5 years) the institutional assessment and accreditation. A.R.A.C.I.P. was founded in 2005 and since then it became the key role institution that aims to create a culture of quality and improve the learning outcomes, being the national public institution under the Ministry of Education, with legal personality approved by Law no. 87/2006 [8]. Every year, A.R.A.C.I.P. is evaluating around 450-500 schools, both private and state-owned [11]. County School Inspectorates are also subordinated to the Ministry of Education.
As it was mentioned before, A.R.A.C.I.P. is in charge with the external monitoring of all quality aspects in schools. Regarding its internal organization, there was a constant decreasing of staff. For the period November 2005 and October 2009, according to the Government Act No. 1258/2005, the organizational structure of A.R.A.C.I.P. consisted of 50 members [11]. Starting from November 2009, according to the Law No. 329/2009, the organizational structure of A.R.A.C.I.P. was reduced with 10 members [11], among them 32 were external evaluators [9]. According to the Government Act No. 830/2010, the last staff reduction was done in September 2010, and in present A.R.A.C.I.P. has only 12 members. In the last three years (2011-2013), A.R.A.C.I.P. collaborated with other 759 external experts [11]. The Inspectorates are established in each county and they suffer by the reduced personnel, mainly in the last years, due to a law for reducing the number of jobs for the civil servants. Within every inspectorate, there is also a department that deals with the evaluation of schools (Department of Educational Management and Institutional Evaluation).