Press review – January 12, 2021

At the moment, after the centralizations so far, there are 237 thousand students who did not have internet and 287 thousand students who did not have IT equipment, announced the Minister of Education, Sorin Cîmpeanu, on Realitatea TV. The official thus marks a failure of the Orban government in the Education crisis, the number of students without access to online school being higher now compared to the spring 2020 report, based on which the purchase of almost 250 thousand tablets was made with government money.

"At the moment, know that the reports I have are of 237.000 students who did not have internet and 287.000 students who did not have IT equipment. We asked for an update in these reports and we will see what the extent of the phenomenon is. If the values ​​are really that high, it means that we will have to intervene with other measures besides the remedial ones", declared Sorin Cîmpeanu.

In the initial census of students without devices and without internet, carried out last spring, The Ministry of Education announced that there were almost 250 thousand students in this situation. The statistic was the basis for the purchase of tablets, in total value of almost 150 million lei, money allocated from the emergency fund available to the Prime Minister, from the Government.

The auction was launched in the summer, and the tablets were distributed to schools in full only last month. The Minister of Education, Sorin Cîmpeanu, said at the beginning of the week that not all the tablets reached the students because 20% of them would not have been picked up for various reasons, whether the students already had tablets from other sources, whether the parents refused or that the students and their parents did not show up to pick them up.

In addition to these tablets, the Orban Government launched a parallel scheme for the settlement of tablets or lapropos from European money, through the Ministry of European Funds, in which schools, town halls, or partnerships between schools and school inspectorates or schools and town halls could participate.

On January 11, the Executive Offices of FSNPPC and SNPPC voted on the protest calendar that their organizations support, as a result of the proposals and vote that took place on the same day at the level of the National Trade Union Confederation, Cartel Alfa, to which they are affiliated .

According to the union communique of the education unions,

The main requests are

- the repeal of art. I of GEO 226 / 2020, which cancels the increase of position salaries/basic salaries by 1/2 of the resulting difference between the current amount and that provided for in the law for January 2022 (: Art. I. – (1) By way of derogation from to the provisions of Article 38 paragraph (4) and paragraph (4^1) letter c) of the Framework Law no. 153/2017 on the remuneration of staff paid from public funds, with subsequent amendments and additions, in the year 2021, starting from January 1, 2021, the gross amount of basic salaries/basic position balances/basic position salaries/monthly employment allowances benefited by the staff paid from public funds is maintained at the same level as the one granted for the month of December 2020 to the extent that the staff occupy the same position and carry out their activity under the same conditions); repeal of art. VIII – (7), from GEO 226 / 2020 which cancels the indexation of state military pensions, with the inflation rate (Art. VIII – (7) By derogation from art. 59 of Law no. 223/2015 on state military pensions, with subsequent amendments and additions, in 2021 the state military pensions established under the law are not updated with the average annual inflation rate) the increase to 25% of the increase for risk and neuropsychic overload to all current beneficiaries (specialists from criminal investigation structures, of combating organized crime, of special actions and interventions, from detention-transfer centers, of forensics, etc.) cf. Law 153/2017 increasing the monthly food allowance granted to MAI staff, given the fact that the current value has not been updated with indices consumer prices of food products, as they are established by the National Institute of Statistics. the inclusion in working conditions of the contractual staff within the MAI, cf HG 246 / 2017 the granting of a salary supplement for medical risk and the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who are on the front line, who daily expose their health to this danger, through the lens of the missions carried out and permanent contact with various categories of people, symptomatic or asymptomatic (SPOR COVID )

Forms of protest and their venues

14.01.2021 the caravan picketing-rally Baia Mare

15.01.2021 the caravan is picketing-rallying in Zalău and Tg.Mures

16.01.2021 the caravan is picketing-rallying in Brasov

17.01.2021 the caravan pickets-rally in Ploiesti

18.01.2021 the caravan is picketing-rallying at the Presidential Administration 10,00-12,00

18.01.2021 picketing in 1 prefecture/day - TIMIȘ

The Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ARACIS) took a position, on Monday, against the requests made on Friday by the University Consortium for the government, which mentioned, among other things, this agency and the need to improve the legislation in the field.

• On Friday, the rectors of the University Consortium, which brings together several of the most important universities in the country, sent a series of requests to the new government. Among the petitions of the signatories were the urgent evaluation of doctoral studies and the "analysis and improvement of the regulations regarding the selection of members and the operation of ARACIS (...)" The same document also mentioned, among the demands of the Consortium, the "redrawing" of the map of Romanian higher education, through a classification of universities according to the assumed mission and their international scope.

In its position on Monday, ARACIS states among other things:

The Minister of Education, Sorin Cîmpeanu, stated that following consultations with representatives of students, teachers and parents, it was decided that the national exams should take place with physical presence, in order to ensure their relevance. "The exam topic will be established, adapted, correlated with the realities of this year. It makes no sense to deny the fact that there have been losses in education. The important thing is to correctly identify those losses," he said, in an intervention on TVR.

"They all requested and together we agreed that we will do everything possible for the national exams to take place predictably, on the dates they are planned for. We established that the national exams take place with physical presence, to ensure the relevance of these national exams. Having already two fixed points, it is quite possible that we will have to yield in another part, because if we did not yield in any part, it would be as if we had a normal year, in which nothing happened. This is obviously false," the Minister of Education emphasized.

In the context in which the Ministry of Education postponed the exact date of the resumption of classes in physical format, the Timiș County Council of Students emphasizes the uncertainty and problems that are created around this decision. The representatives of the students from Timiș say that, in the future, schoolchildren encounter problems connecting to online classes.

The president of CJE Timiș, Francesca Ferescu, emphasizes the fact that students do not have the possibility to connect to online classes. At the end of December, the leadership of the County School Inspectorate covered a need for almost 7.000 tablets, through a program with the Ministry of Education, which were distributed in the county, depending on requests. However, several hundred tablets would still be needed, according to the figures, which will be distributed with the help of county NGOs and town halls in the territory.

"Students and teachers are still forced to adapt and show extreme flexibility in the unusual and perhaps even rigid environment imposed by the online school. After almost a semester of classes conducted in this regime, we notice that one of the biggest problems of students in Timiș county is the impossibility of connecting to online courses, even correlated with the lack of resources necessary to take part in classes. As the future is rather ambiguous and we cannot rely with certainty on the start of classes on a fixed date, we believe that measures are necessary to be implemented as soon as possible, which will offer equal opportunities to all students, both from environments with favorable conditions and those from disadvantaged environments", says Francesca Ferescu, president of CJE Timiș.

The students from Timiș say that the online school is ineffective, and the home environment is not suitable for the assimilation of knowledge. There are also concerns from students in their final years, who take the national exams.​

The National Council of Rectors requests at least 1% of GDP for higher education, as well as a significant increase in the budget allocation for scientific research, according to a press release.

"Although the average allocation per physical student has increased steadily since 2015, it remains one of the lowest in the European Union, according to the Public Report 2019 - State of Higher Education Financing (CNFIS). Romania competes with some of the most advanced countries in the world in terms of higher education, but universities benefit from up to 10 times less funding in the last decade", states the CNR.

"We draw attention to the fact that, without an adequate placement of the fields of education and research in the hierarchy of the state's priorities - starting with financing, reforms in any field are doomed to failure or greatly hampered, thus affecting Romania's long-term development", they say.

Rectors' requirements:

"1. Granting at least 1% of GDP for higher education;
2. The significant increase in the budget allocation for scientific research, which would make it credible to reach as early as possible the percentage of 1% of GDP that Romania has already committed to, with the diversification and flexibility of the instruments for accessing funds;
3. The additional allocation of funds intended specifically and predictably for the scientific research component of higher education;
4. The flexibility of spending the sums from the budget of higher education institutions, in accordance with the principles of university autonomy - guaranteed by the Romanian Constitution, so that universities can use their available funds according to the decisions of the University Senate, within the limits of the law, but without being the approval of the government authorities is required."

Adelina Mihai: 1 in 4 employees in Romania work for the state, and the state continued to make new hires in the midst of the crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic. What do the latest statistics show? How many budgeters do we have left?

Dan Pavel: The latest statistics show that we have more and more. Almost without number. We see that every year we grow, we add several tens of thousands of employees to the total number. We have 1,24 million state employees right now, 46.000 more than two years ago. We have ever-increasing expenses with budgets, given that we are heading for a deficit this year of 10% of GDP. We have a decision by the Government at this moment to cap the salaries of budget workers and a lot of dissatisfaction in the budget sector. And we have something else, we still have the feeling of people that we are giving the money for nothing, the salaries of the budget workers, which does not seem to me to be a fair discussion. This discussion is much more nuanced.

Adelina Mihai: Yes, and if we look at what happened during the previous crisis, the one in 2008, practically then we had 1,4 million employees in the state, during the legacy left by the Călin Popescu Tăriceanu government, and until 2010-2011, we again reached 1,2 million budget workers, but no layoffs were made, but hiring was blocked. A job was made for 7 departures and practically a large part of the budget officers left the system through retirement and that's how the big restructuring was done. And then the crisis of crises hit us and in 2010 we cut salaries by 25%, which we later paid, because the budget officers sued the state for cutting salaries. Which are the ministries with the most employees now? Or what are the policemen's reactions to this salary freeze?

Dan Pavel: You know what I was thinking about that? As I was saying, the people's feeling is that we pay a lot of money for the salaries of budget officers and some even say that they shouldn't, they don't deserve anything, the people who make me stand in line for seven hours to pay a bitter tax, for example. The discussion is not really like that. I don't think it's the fault of the employees, but the fault of the employer, the fault of the state, which does not want to reform this budget. The large mass of state employees is often used in electoral campaigns. Union leaders speak louder or more slowly, depending on the interests they have at that moment. We do not see differential wages or differential wage increases for each employee to effectively stimulate the employee at work.

And the performances. And we see mass increases, for everyone, mass stagnation, for everyone, or, as we've seen before, decreases for everyone, 25%. So it is clear that it is not a healthy system, it is not a system that encourages performance. We have a lot, a quarter of employees in the state sector, but despite all that, we constantly have the feeling that there are not enough anywhere. And look how we found ourselves now, in this crisis, when we needed DSP and an employee to make this system work, we found that there are no employees. We had employees in the medical system to make the system work, we found out that we have no employees. The police have often said that they are not enough. Mr. Andrei told us that the leader of the European union Europol from the police, told us that there are localities where the emergency services only work until a certain schedule. If the terrorists do come, say, after 10 at night, on a Friday or at the weekend, they may not find the police at work. So a lot of employees put where they shouldn't be.

Three-quarters of teachers and parents and over half of children consider it necessary to reopen schools, according to a survey carried out by the Save the Children organization.

Most of the parents (78,4%) and teachers (73,1%) believe that students must return to school as soon as possible, where there is a need for a rethinking of the school curriculum (80,9%) and measures of remedial education (43,7%), according to an opinion poll carried out by the Save the Children Organization during the month of December.

As far as the children are concerned, 56,8% of them declare themselves in favor of the reopening of schools. Regarding the return to school, the complete data of the online survey reveal that: 56,8% of students are in favor of reopening schools, while 23,5% prefer maintaining the online format; 78,4% of parents consider it necessary to reopen schools, while only 12,7% say they prefer the school to be kept online; only 14,2% of the teachers believe that the school must remain online, while 73,1% of the teaching staff consider it necessary to return to the banks. The rest declare themselves undecided.

With regard to the conditions that schools must meet, in order for the reopening to be done safely, most emphasize the existence of sanitary materials, but an important condition is also the avoidance of crowding in the spaces adjacent to schools:

 83,5% of the respondents believe that ensuring hygienic-sanitary conditions is a necessary condition for the opening of schools.

 69,8% say that medical assistance is needed in all schools.

 59,3% of those interviewed want measures to be taken to avoid crowding around schools.

 45,3% believe that it is necessary to reduce the number of students in classes.

 44,8% believe that there is a need for safe transport to and from school.

Once the didactic activity in schools is resumed, it becomes imperative to recover the material and cover the educational gap for vulnerable children, who did not have a real participation in online education.

 80.9% consider it useful to revise the school curriculum, with emphasis on the essential subject.

 43,7% say that support interventions are needed for those who failed to actually participate in online education.

 A small percentage - 10,2% - is in favor of extending the duration of courses this school year.

The survey was conducted between December 7 and 30, on a non-probability sample of 8.193 respondents, of which 5.811 were students, 1.734 were parents and 648 were teachers.