NGO: Over 200,000 gifted children in Romania

The local NGO Gifted Education Center has kicked off a partnership campaign with schools and high schools in Bucharest to discover gifted children and youth aged 5 to 18. The campaign takes place through the platform mintistralucite.ro, which offers intelligence screening. The NGO says that the testing is important in order to offer Romania a clear situation of its gifted children and craft educational policies accordingly, but also because many gifted children end up marginalized. There are over 200,000 gifted children younger than 15, who do not know they have high abilities, according to the Gifted Education Center data. Over 97% of them end up abandoning school, not finding a place in society, suffering from depression, anxiety, alienation, or even committing antisocial acts, the NGO says. They need to be offered a distinct education, in a distinct environment, that is especially conceived for them and allows them to put their high potential to use. Over the past eight years, the Gifted Education Center in Bucharest tested over 2,000 children enrolled in Romanian schools. More than half of them fall in the gifted category, with an IQ of over 130. Romanian education system struggles with funding, basic skills underachievement editor@romania-insider.com