The Baccalaureate exam which took place in Romania last week ended in a failure rate of 44.6 percent, down 11 percentage points on last year's, according to Education Minister Remus Pricopie. Last year, the results of the Baccalaureate exam were among the worst in Romania's history.

He explained the better results this year by saying the exam subjects were differentiated, but also highlighted the smaller number of high school graduates who signed up for their final exam: 188,000 this year, compared to 200,000 last year.

Over 60 percent of the students having graduated high school during this school year passed the Baccalaureate, while only 30.6 percent of those who had graduated in previous years managed to pass their final exam.

This year, the exam started in fraud suspicions in Bucharest, and ended up with a high school director taken into custody, and students questioned by the Police.

Five teachers in the baccalaureate commission and 32 supervisors at the Dimitrie Bolintineanu high school ended up at the Police for hearings, on suspicions of fraud during the Romanian language test on Monday, July 1. The director and the deputy director of the high school were fired. Prosecutors, together with the Police and the General Anticorruption Directorate ANI searched the high school for evidence of fraud. According to the Police, there is substantial evidence against the 37 teachers, including footage. The teachers are accused of having leaked the exam topics half an hour before the start of the exam. The Police, which had been working on this case for about a month after being tipped by someone, found the teachers had money and gifts on them on the day of the exam.

After the exam ended on Friday, July 5, the Police came and took 100 students in for questioning, much to the disapproval of parents. A total of 250 students are to be questioned in this exam fraud case, as the Police is trying to find new evidence of fraud involving the teachers who supervised the exam.

editor@romania-insider.com