The Ministry of Education held the preparatory class in 2012

The new management of the Ministry of Education does not give up this year at the introduction of preparatory class, but it is not excluded that next year this may happen.

So far, the interim Minister Liviu Pop has announced that the problem should be analyzed for the next school year because this year is too late to disband the preparatory class.

As regards purchases of furniture and materials for the necessary infrastructure of the preparatory class setting up the responsibility was transferred to each teaching unit and it won't make on the regions, as had set up the previous Government.

The decision was taken following an audit required by financial control- required by the premier Victor Ponta.

On the audit that was carried out, the Ministry of Education has found long delays, in purchasing furniture and also teaching materials necessary preparatory class.

In this context, Minister of Education Liviu Pop decided to transfer the amounts allocated to the eight regions, to each school unit for purchase in a timely manner.

"Today, only one of the eight regions have completed the procedure. There is real risk of not being able to have this furniture in schools on 13 September. For this reason, as the sole solution, I decided to transfer the amount from the regions to educational units and transfer the procurement responsibilities to school units principals. There are 130,000 beneficiaries, which means the amounts allocated per pupil, of approximately 200 lei. As regards those 23 million lei allocated for the purchase of teaching materials, the audit found even higher delays.

"We decided to complete a government decision that will go into the government sitting only next week. Unfortunately, in the budget of the Ministry of Education there are no amounts provided for creation for playgrounds within these classes. I will propose some possible solutions to the Prime Minister, after some analysis, "said Liviu Pop.

The preparatory classes are taught by 6,000 qualified teachers.

"To have qualified resources and formats for this class, I will initiate a normative act in order to complete the National Education Law. It is clear that we need at least 6,000 teachers who teach in the preparatory classes. We are forced to make the movement of personnel, so that the preparatory classes have human resource, which is now in the system and can be made up until 13 September, "said Liviu Pop.

Asked by the journalists about the financing of higher education through grants or budgeted seats , Minister of Education Liviu Pop has not given a clear answer.

Former Minister of Education, Ioan Mang, however, said on Monday at the end of talks with interim Minister Liviu Pop, that the decision of the higher education funding by grants announced by former Minister of Education Cătălin Baba and not students seats dissatisfy a lot the universities with the possibility of infringements of other provisions of existing legislation.

He mentioned, however, that, at this time, in higher education, there are other issues to be resolved, such as the situation of jobs which are now blocked, the diplomas issued by the University "Spiru Haret".

"Unfortunately, at this meeting were not present the other two Ministers, who contributed greatly to all the problems that exist today in the national system of education: jobs are lbocked in higher education, the situation at Spiru Haret, the fact that all universities are dissatisfied with this idea of grants. In fact, this would produce I think other infringements of other laws, "said former Minister of education, Ioan Mang.

Translated by

Denisse-Meda Bucura

MTTLC, Bucharest University