Romania’s Education Ministry has sent a note to school inspectorates across the country forbidding the use of auxiliary textbooks that haven’t been approved by the state.

If schools don’t respect the obligation, the ministry “reserves the right to notify the competent state bodies", according to the note cited by Hotnews.ro.

The note was sent in the context of a disastrous beginning for the new school year. The Education Ministry wanted to change the textbooks used in the previous years and introduce new ones, but hasn’t managed to complete the public tenders to acquire the new school books. Students thus started the school without any books.

The Ministry drafted a 300-page compendium for all classes, including Romanian, Mathematics or History, which has to be used in the following period.

A teacher published earlier this week an alternative open-source school book for the Romanian classes, which was hugely popular on social media. However, that schoolbook is not legal based on the ministry’s note.

At the end of August, education minister Liviu Pop said that private publishing houses will no longer be allowed to print school books and sell them to the state. The state-owned publisher Editura Didactica si Pedagogica (Didactic and Pedagogical Publishing House) will instead hold the monopoly on printing school books.

editor@romania-insider.com