Romania starts Baccalaureate exams with fraud suspicions at Bucharest high school, teachers fired, taken into custody

The first day of the Baccalaureate exam in Romania ended in scandal at a high school in Bucharest. Five teachers in the baccalaureate commission and 32 supervisors at the Dimitrie Bolintineanu high school ended up at the Police for hearings, on suspicions of fraud during the Romanian language test on Monday, July 1. The director and the deputy director of the high school were fired. Prosecutors, together with the Police and the General Anticorruption Directorate ANI searched the high school for evidence of fraud. According to the Police, there is substantial evidence against the 37 teachers, including footage. The teachers are accused of having leaked the exam topics half an hour before the start of the exam. The Police, which had been working on this case for about a month after being tipped by someone, found the teachers had money and gifts on them on the day of the exam. The incident will not however influence the rest of the baccalaureate exams, which will continue according to the agreed schedule. The Education Ministry re-assured that the subjects of the exams are being securely sent to high schools across Romania and that a possible fault in the system has been ruled out. The prosecutors started a case of corruption against the teachers on the supervising commission at the Dimitrie Bolintineanu high school, and the director of the high school was taken into custody for 24 hours. The written exams for the Baccalaureate started on Monday, July 1 in Romania, with 160,000 students having graduated the 12th grade expected to attend the exams this week. Last year, the results of the Baccalaureate exam were among the worst in Romania's history: a 50 percent failure rate. editor@romania-insider.com