Romania’s new education minister, who has been in office since the end of December, has kicked off his mandate with an overhaul of the high school framework plans, which outline the structure and content of upper secondary education.

The proposed changes, currently under public debate, have generated widespread reactions and disputes, in a system that has seen numerous changes throughout the years. The minister explained the framework plans are a many-sided emergency, as the institution he heads put forth plans aiming to avoid overload, give schools and students a bigger say in what is studied, and better equip them to face the labor market or further their education, among others. Meanwhile, teachers have voiced concerns regarding the disciplines that all students need to study and their weight in the curriculum. More on what the new framework plans include and how the debate has been shaping up so far below.

What are the high school framework plans?

The high school framework plans are the documents establishing the structure and content of the four years of high school education, namely the subjects studied and the hours allotted to each. They cover the different profiles and specializations (e.g. sciences, humanities, the arts) and provide the guidelines for organizing high school education. The plans also set out the competencies students should acquire in each subject and the skills needed for their academic and personal development.

Who designs the high school framework plans?

The Education Ministry has designed the plans and has offered them for public consultation since the end of January. Another version will follow once the consultations end.

Four public discussions on them have been scheduled, and the ministry hopes to adopt them by the end of May.

Once they are adopted, the work should start on designing new textbooks, the documents outlining what should be covered in each discipline and when (programa școlară), and the National Center for Educational Policies and Evaluation (CNPEE) will develop the new programs for the baccalaureate, the exam Romanian students take upon graduating from high school. The ministry also spoke of training teachers to focus on modern teaching and learning methods while highlighting as a practice to avoid the widespread one of delivering classes by asking pupils to write down what teachers dictate.

The first cohort who should study according to the new high school plans will be those entering grade IX in the 2026-2027 school year.

Why are they being changed?

Their introduction has been postponed several times, including last year, when Romania held four election rounds (local, EU Parliament, presidential and parliamentary elections). The frameworks currently in use are based on the ones developed in 1999, with several updates made throughout the years. The new frameworks are based on law no 198/2023 concerning pre-university education, which not only guides but also conditions the curricular change process, the Education Ministry explained.

While acknowledging that the project of the new high school framework plans inevitably comes with challenges, education minister Daniel David explained in a post on his blog that the plans are a multi-faceted emergency.

“The framework plans represent (1) curricular emergencies - they should have been introduced in 2021 at the latest, (2) legal emergencies - they are imposed by the legal provisions of 2023, (3) moral-psychological emergencies - we can no longer put our children at risk by burdening them with an exaggerated number of subjects and classes, often without an adequate psycho-pedagogical configuration, and, extremely important, (4) a national security emergency - functional illiteracy already puts our country at risk. This cannot continue! And the role of a responsible minister is to address precisely such problems/reforms,” the minister wrote.

What do the framework plans bring?

The framework plans for high school propose "a curricular paradigm focused on predictability, equity, flexibility, and relevance," the Education Ministry says. "They aim to ensure a set of basic and specialist skills for all students, correlated with the key competence descriptors and priority attributes in the training profile."

They emphasize a "balanced" curriculum, aimed at avoiding overload. In grades IX and X, the emphasis is on accommodation, awareness of differences between educational levels and supporting a smooth transition, the Education Ministry document presenting them explains. They allows various adjustments, including changes in the educational track, and gradually introduce specialization, which becomes the focus in grades XI and XII.

The framework plans aim to increase the say of the schools in the curriculum they offer, the ministry said, by letting them decide on the offer of disciplines/ modules that make up the optional part of the curriculum, following consultations with the direct and indirect beneficiaries and the school's partners. This could take into account the resources of every educational unit, an analysis of the students' learning needs, and a focus on the disciplines relevant for their future academic and professional tracks. For students who take part in international competitions, it could create the premises for them to achieve top results, the ministry argued.

The framework plans consist of a common core, studied in all educational tracks available in local high schools - theoretical, vocational and technological – contributing to the development of basic skills and general knowledge. Another part is the specialized curriculum (CS), which is meant to equip students with specific professional and academic skills. A third part is the curriculum the students can choose from the school's offer (CDEOȘ).

Schools can design the specialized curriculum (CS) depending on their resources, thus allowing the school and the teachers a greater say in establishing relevant disciplines that can define the school's identity, the ministry argued. At the same time, students can further choose disciplines that correspond to their interests and desired educational path from the CDEOȘ.

The common core is meant to equip students with basic skills (general knowledge) and contribute to the formation of key skills (including functional literacy). Its share decreases from grades IX/X (65%) to grades XI/XII (35%). Most of the subjects/topics it covers are related to the national baccalaureate exam. The common core includes 15 subjects in each of grades IX/X, distributed in seven curricular areas, and nine subjects in each of grades XI/XII, distributed in five curricular areas.

The specialized curriculum is supposed to ensure the specialized competencies specific to the various high school profiles and specializations/professional qualifications. It replaces the current differentiated curriculum. Its share increases from grades IX/X (25%) to grades XI/XII (45%). It is a semi-flexible support for specialized knowledge and includes a fixed component (between 77-100%, representing 8-13 hours) and a flexible component (between 0-23%, representing 0-3 hours). For the vocational and technological tracks, the specialized curriculum is fixed, once the track/specialization is chosen. Some subjects/topics in the specialized curriculum are related to the national baccalaureate exam.

The curriculum the students can choose from the school offer replaces the current 'curriculum segment at the school's discretion.' It is meant to contribute to forming students' skills through flexible support for personal learning needs and interests. Its share increases from grades IX/X (10%, representing 1-3 hours) to grades XI/XII (20%, representing 5-8 hours).

The common core & the mandatory disciplines

The common core is shared by all study tracks available to high school students in Romania, namely the theoretical track (covering the humanities and sciences [real] profiles), the technological track (covering the technical, services, natural resources, and environmental protection profiles), and the vocational track (military, theological, sports, artistic, and pedagogical profiles).

What has been debated intensely since the frameworks were put up for consultation was the number of hours allotted to each discipline as well as what disciplines should be part of the common core. Latin, Geography, History, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology are some of the disciplines that generated vehement debates, with teachers, students, and education experts making strong pleas on their importance and weight in the curriculum. Other disciplines, like Grammar, are set to be reintroduced in the high school curriculum, Minister David announced. "We will bring back disciplines that directly contribute to national culture (e.g. History of Romanians) to send a clear message that a modern world cannot exist without national identity, and grammar will return as well to high school; as I have said when the framework plans were launched, too many children do not know the country's history or geography and speak Romanian poorly," the minister said.

In the proposal under debate at the moment, Romanian is allotted 16.65% of the total number of the common core hours, the first modern language 13.28%, and Mathematics 6.74%. Meanwhile, a share of 6.64% is allotted to IT & communication technology, a discipline from the Social – Humanities field (such as Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Social Studies, Logic, or Economics), a second modern language, Sports, and Religion (optional) each. History, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Fine Arts take up 3.37% each. The common core also includes Personal Development and Career Counseling, with 6.64%.

For each discipline, the number of hours varies from grade to grade as outlined in this document, and according to the different study profiles.

In the case of Romanian, for instance, the common core includes 3 hours per week in grades IX and X and two hours in grades XI and XII, prompting the Romanian Language and Literature Teacher Association (ANPRO) to request three hours per week for the discipline, regardless of profile or specialization, as reported by Edupedu.ro.

Reacting to some of the feedback received on the share of each discipline in the common core, the education minister explained that the disciplines that directly contribute to the national culture and identity, such as Romanian and History, feature in all years of the common core and their share can be increased through the flexible specialized curriculum if the school wants to, or with hours proposed by the school and chosen by the students (CDEOȘ). As for Religion, which remains optional, he explained the discipline was "thought so as to bring more clearly into the discussion also moral and ethical aspects and ones related to combating religious extremism." Regarding History and Geography, where hours can also be added if the schools and the students decide on it, the minister said he registered the proposals to maintain the two disciplines with a mandatory nature, without their study depending on the options of the educational unit and the students.

The status of Religion remains unclear, as outlined in this Edupedu.ro analysis. Although the law concerning pre-university education stipulates the need to have it as part of the common core, it also foresees that the student can opt out of attending Religion classes. Those who opt out need to remain in school in that time slot, and their GPA is calculated without this discipline.

What did the ministry say after the first consultations?

In a document synthesizing the main observations after the first consultations, the ministry said it was important to take into account not only the common core but also the special curriculum and the one chosen by the student when discussing the number of hours allotted to disciplines. Instead of comparing the current common core to the proposed common core, the analysis should take into account that the specialized curriculum can make up for the potential reductions in the number of hours in the common core, while CDEOȘ allows for students to reorganize according to their interests, it said.

The common core is meant to be shared regardless of the students' learning acquisitions, bringing the challenge of "calibrating the compulsory curriculum so that, from the perspective of generalizing compulsory education until the end of high school, it does not endanger equality of opportunity and is not a factor that leads to an increase in school dropout," the ministry said. In the last grades of high school, schools and students will be able to choose whether to have more hours in a subject they are interested in.

In a message released at the launch of the framework plans for consultation, minister David pointed out that an important change is that the ministry no longer allots a certain number of hours to a discipline, but the school and the students have a say in the time they spend studying a certain subject through options offered by the other parts of the curriculum, outside of the core one.

Another voiced concern was that the new curriculum would not help students prepare for the high school graduation exam (baccalaureate), but the ministry says the syllabus of each subject for the exam will be correlated with the new distribution of the subjects in the curriculum. It again pointed to the flexibility students and schools have as schools can offer students additional preparation hours for exams, based on the needs of their students, and students can opt to study more subjects that fit their interests.

To the concern that eliminating a unified curriculum at the national level might generate discrepancies between schools, the ministry answered by saying that the new curricular architecture comes as a direct answer to the feedback from teachers and students, who, in time, said that school curricula are too rigid and do not take into account the realities of every school. This is why the degree of curricular flexibility and autonomy of the common core was increased, and a specialty curriculum (CS) and a curriculum chosen by the student (CDEOȘ) were introduced.

The ministry also acknowledged a series of administrative challenges generated by the change in the curriculum but said they were not insurmountable obstacles and that it was working on identifying the best solutions.

Some of the other concerns that emerged referred to students being motivated to choose disciplines where it would be easier to get good grades, the need to allot a predictable slot to the flexible curriculum so that both students and teachers know how classes will take place, issues related to the payment of teachers if classes with a lower number of students emerge following the selections made by students, and the need for further training of teachers so that they can teach new disciplines or modules, to be able to propose new programs and benefit from career flexibility.

When are the following public consultations on the framework plans scheduled?

The first national discussion on the framework plans for high school took place in Bucharest, at the Polytechnic University, on February 11. A second one was held in Cluj-Napoca on February 14, and a third in Iași (February 25). The consultations will continue in Timișoara (March 4), and one last session will be organized online on March 6.

The framework plans are available, in Romanian, here.

The number of hours in the common core are outlined here.

(Photo: Sarinya Pinngam/ Dreamstime)

simona@romania-insider.com