The educational institutions from small localities will be transformed into branches of district schools. The announcement was made by the Minister of Education, Culture and Research, Monica Babuc, following the weekly meeting of the Democratic Party of Moldova (PDM) today.

According to the official, the amendment states that “schools will continue to work with teachers and pupils who study there, but the institution will be assigned to a district school. Therefore, it will have no expenses for the administrative body: director, accountant, study director,” said Babuc.

Similarly, the cited source specified that the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research has developed four groups of indicators on the basis of which the evaluation of the school optimization process will be implemented in Moldova.  “During 2010 – 2017, 218 schools were closed in Moldova and 303 educational institutions were reorganized. The premises that led to that necessary reform were: small number of pupils, insufficient material base and lack of teachers. But we have been convinced that in this trial, hasty and wrong actions were taken. In this context, we initiated a dialogue with local public authorities to evaluate the process of school optimization. For this, the ministry has developed four sets of indicators on the basis of which this assessment will be carried out,” said Babuc.

The Minister said that the first set of indicators would address the economic impact of optimization process as to highlight the economic benefits, how the economies were used, and whether they went to maintain or improve the education system.

“The second and third groups refer to the impact on the human factor, especially on pupils and teachers. We are going to see how the children have adopted the new conditions, what are the parents’ visions about transportation of pupils, how they feed these children. We want to see what conditions of the teachers are, following this optimization process, plus working conditions, transportation. The fourth set of indicators is to determine the impact of school closure on localities where this process occurred. The Ministry will complete the evaluation period by 01 February 2018, and then establish and develop a strategy to resize the network of education institutions so that for the new school year we have a clear vision of how the process of school optimization should evolve in Moldova,” said Monica Babuc.

The official also said that the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research intended to draft the projects and modify the Education Code with reference to the involvement of the ministry in the decision – making process in reorganizing the network of educational institutions. The school curriculum, which is currently very busy, is also being revised. Similarly, more actions will be undertaken to reduce the number of reports submitted by teachers.

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