Foundation: Romania’s primary education is underfunded

Romania allots “disproportionately large” budget resources to university education, in contrast to the “disproportionately low” ones granted to primary education, a new info-graphic of the Social Monitor revealed. The Social Monitor is a project of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Romania foundation. The primary education system in Romania receives a share that is two times lower than that in Denmark or Latvia. The country allots 20.3% out of the education budget to primary education, while Denmark allots 45% of its education budget to it, and Latvia 37.4%, according to the same source. One of the quantifiable effects of this is the “unsatisfying” situation of the Romanian students’ results in the PISA testing. In the past years, results stagnated in Math and dropped in Reading and Sciences, the Social Monitor shows. The Monitor proposes two explanations for this situation: either the resources allotted to primary education do not lead to the acquisition of educational aptitudes at an acceptable level, or the resources allotted to secondary education are not distributed inefficiently. Romanian students do a little better in PISA testing but their results are still way below average editor@romania-insider.com