Romanian colleges pointed out for discriminating students on their grades

Three schools in Braşov, a city in central Romania, have set several provisions allowing them to remove secondary school students who do not achieve a certain minimum yearly GPA. The three schools are Doctor Ioan Meşotă National College, Andrei Şaguna National College, and Grigore Moisil National Informatics College, Educatieprivata.ro reported. At Andrei Şaguna National College, the students who do not have at the end of the year a general GPA of 8.50, GPAs of minimum 8 in Romanian and Mathematics, and a minimum grade of 9.50 for conduct are declared unfit to the educational standards assumed by the parent when the child was enrolled. As such, the students are asked to transfer to other schools in the following school year. At Doctor Ioan Meşotă National College, a provision stipulates that students can no longer continue to study with the school if one semester they had a grade for conduct lower than 8, a yearly GPA in Romanian or Mathematics lower than 7, and if they fail to earn at least 7 when reexamined in the subjects they failed. At Grigore Moisil National Informatics College, students need to have a general GPA higher than 8, a conduct grade lower than 10, and GPAs higher than 7 in Mathematics and Romanian to continue their studies with the school. In local secondary education, students receive grades ranging from 1 to 10, where 10 is the maximum grade and 5 the passing one. Ecaterina Andronescu, the education minister, called the requirement discriminatory. “It is discriminatory and we cannot do such things,” she told Edupedu.ro. The minister said she had a conversation with the education inspector in Braşov, who will recommend the schools to eliminate this requirement from their regulations. Several students’ association also called the GPA requirement discriminatory. “Getting rid of students who do not achieve a certain grade is only perpetuating the elitist mentality of the educational system, a toxic mentality which focuses exclusively on students who earn awards at contests and Olympiads, without trying to support students who have difficulties learning,” the associations said in a press release quoted by News.ro. Romanian minister prepares education reform