Romania
Educational system
The reform of the national educational system registered a rapid evolution, but not always followed by positive effects. The extension of the compulsory education to 10 grades is an important adopted measure that needs to be mentioned. In the same time, the main problems of the educational systems are given by the instability of the adopted measures, by the low financial motivation of the teachers and also by the major differences between rural and urban areas in what concerns the material conditions and the school enrolment rate.
Reaching a value of 72.6% during the school year 2005-2006, the enrolment rate in all the educational levels raised with approximately 6% in comparison with 2000-2001 school year. To this situation contributed also that the number of persons attending university has tripled in the last 15 years.
The poor economic situation of a large number of families and also parents and children‘s mentality towards education are factors that generated a high level of school abandonment. Comparing with the value of 0.6% in the school year 2000-2001, the drop-out rate reached 1.7% in the school year 2004-2005, as it is showed in the statistics offered by Ministry of Education, Research and Youth.
Also, the census of Romania's population, carried out in 2002, revealed that more than 100,000 persons aged 15-25 are illiterate.
The school enrolment rate of Roma children is much lower than the national average, and their discrimination in school environment is pronounced. The statistics offered by the Ministry of Education, Research and Youth showed that in 2003, a number of 158,128 Roma children were registered in different educational levels: 12.4% in kindergartens, 47.3% in I-IV grades, 34% in V-VIII grades and 6.2% in secondary education. Within Roma minority, especially within girls, a decrease of pupils' number is noticed concomitant with age growing. Also, the multicultural education is still insufficiently promoted; the number of classes in Romani language is low, reuniting for example, in school year 2004-2005, 118 pupils from I-VIII grades. In the same scholar year, 22 children benefited from specific kindergarten classes in Romani language.
The education for children with disabilities still takes place mainly in segregated forms, although remarkable efforts for including them in the mass education system are carried out. Therefore, the Ministry of Education, Research and Youth showed that 10,338 disabled children were individually integrated in mass education and 3,957 in compact classes, in the school year 2005-2006. Also, for these children, 699 support teachers were trained, number still insufficient relating to the pupils' number. This fact determines the school drop-out of some children with disabilities and also the failure in reaching the objective of the inclusive education.
The education is one of the fundamental rights of every person, no matter of his/her age. However, from different causes, there are many persons who never attended school or who dropped-out. As a response to this problem, Ministry of Education, Research and Youth developed the "Second Chance" Programme, with to components - primary and low-secondary education, programme coordinated through county school inspectorates.