More than half of Romanians would send their children to study abroad, poll finds

Over 60 percent of Romanians would send their children to study abroad, according to a research conducted by the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategies. According to the poll, 61 percent of Romanians have a bad opinion about the Romanian education system and only 36 percent trust it. The poll also shows that 61 percent of respondents would send their children to study abroad. Only a quarter of Romanians consider the country's education system is better than that in the European Union, while slighlty more than half of them believe the EU education system is better. Most of Romanian believe the local education system is information-centered and focuses less on developing students' abilities, while students are not ready to meet market demands. The overwhelming majority of Romanians believe that setting up new vocational schools would be a good thing. On the same note, over 70 percent of respondents said university graduates have poor knowledge and training, and 77 percent of them said university graduation diplomas have no value. According to the poll, 91 percent of parents resort to private tutors to have their children better trained, 43 percent said they resort to this at the request of their children's teachers, while 42 percent of them said they hire tutors because most parents do so. The survey was conducted in the September 6-September 8 interval and polled 1,316 people aged over 18. Mediafax