How many students in Romania’s schools?

Recent data from the National Statistics Institute INS show that there were some 3.73 million children, students and trainees in Romania’s national education system in the 2014/2015 school/university year. They represented 73.9% of the total school-age population. Slightly over 50% of the total school population included in the education system were male students, while 70.1% studied in urban areas. The number of students in the vocational education system almost doubled compared to the previous school year, reaching 50,800 in 2014/2015. However, the vocational education continued to attract the lowest number of students (1.4% of the total school population). High schools and universities registered the most pronounced decline in the number of students registered in the 2014/2015 school year, compared to the previous year (minus 49,500 students, and minus 37,100 students respectively). Almost 57% of the education units in Romania were mainly destined to primary and secondary education, and 22.1% were used as high schools, according to INS. Moreover, 95.5% of Romania’s school population studied in public schools, and only 4.5% were registered in private schools. More than 541,000 students were registered in Romanian universities in the 2014/2015 school year, and over 53% of them were women, the data shows. The most attractive specializations were business, management and law (25.3% of total students), and engineering, processing and construction (21.4%). There were 244,600 teachers in the local education in the 2014/2015 school year, which means an average of 15 children/students per teacher. Most of the teachers in Romania’s education system were women (76.3%), according to INS. The data also shows that most of the education system’s material base is found in the public education network: 96.8% of the total number of classrooms, 95% of the schools labs, 72.5% of the swimming pools, 96.2% of the gyms, 98.1% of the workshops, and 96.8% of the sports fields. Romanian Minister: Education budget to reach 4.5% of the GDP next year Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com