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| MEDIA HEADLINES 12/09/08 |
| (2008-09-12) |
| Last updated: 2008-09-15 14:58 EET |
The Bucharest daily Ziua headlines its first page with a loud “Compulsory education is free only in theory”. In anticipation of the beginning of the schoolyear on September the 15th, the newspaper printed a rough estimate of the money it takes to put a child through school from day one. It came out to around 150 Euro, as the price of what they called first contact. The average wages in Romania are around 1700 new lei, less than 500 Euro, and in 37 of the 41 counties that Romania has the average wages are less than the national average.
Taken by separate categories, uniforms and stationery are only the beginning, with more expenses for special notebooks and textbooks recommended by teachers. The daily Ziua adds that schools often charge parents for money pools for various purposes, even to pay for security guards for schools. And, of course, we should not forget the annual gifts for teachers. So, how much does a school year cost? The newspaper admits that it is hard to gauge a figure, because scheduled expenses are always exceeded, and parents simply pay up. The daily concludes that education, even public education, is a luxury for many families.
More desolating is the fact that “This year, the Ministry of Education still puts students in run down schools”. Although the first bell of the school year rings on Monday, over nine thousand schools have not passed their public sanitation tests because they lack facilities. In addition, "Romania is wasting annually eight billion Euro for education," but in the countryside there are still children who walk miles to get to a school, and learn by candle light.
Branded incompetent by the press for his cascading failures, Minister of Education Cristian Adomnitei is still praised by the daily Ziua. Together with his colleague, Minister of Health Services Eugen Nicolaescu, Adomnitei promised to reduce the workload in schools. The measure was needed, because “one school child in four has chronic ailments acquired in the classroom: speech or sight impediments, delayed growth, deformities of the spine, or anemia. Quoted by Ziua, teachers see this measure as implacable, because they warn that children, even if stay in school less, will have to study just as much. Typically for the Adomnitei ministerial mandate, the curriculum is unchanged.
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