Reports
DP CONCERNED OVER SITUATION IN EDUCATION SECTOR
Chisinau. The parliamentary Democratic Party (DP) presumes the current situation in the Moldovan education sector leaves very much to be desired.
MP Dumitru Ivanov told a news conference in Infotag today that, for instance, the Ministry of Education and Youth Affairs is now preparing to embark on optimization of pre-university educational institutions.
“Thus, schools having under 100 pupils will be closed down, and their pupils will be daily taken by school buses to larger villages having schools. There are about 120 such schools, some 7-8% of all such institutions in the republic. However, nobody knows when this process will be launched”, Ivanov said.
Deputy Chairman of the Democratic Party MP Oleg Serebrean indicated yet another problem: many of the teachers, invited to administer examinations for the bachelor’s degree, have been brought to Chisinau from other parts of the country.
“They have been accommodated at different hostels, but not a single person has received the traveling allowance yet. This is making them fairly vulnerable, or may prompt them to corruption so as, at least, to return their transport expenditures. By the way, in Romania forty-two percent lyceum graduates failed at bachelor’s exams in 2007. In Moldova, an overwhelming majority of lyceum leavers pass the exams successfully. Are we really that talented?”, wondered the parliamentarian.
He expressed concern that the Ministry of Education and Youth Affairs imposes quotas of student enlistment to higher educational institutions.
“Nothing of the kind exists anywhere in the world. With such quotas, private universities are simply discredited because State-run institutions are in more advantageous conditions, as they receive more places”, presumes Oleg Serebrean, who voiced discontent over some exotic disciplines, such as, e.g., “political anthropology… The contents of such sections are vague and incomprehensible, the more so that teachers reading them are ill-trained, and usually agree to teach such subjects only for the sake of extra salaries”.
The DP leaders said they would invite Minister of Education and Youth Affairs Larissa Savga to working meetings of the Democratic Party faction to hear from her what the ministry is doing to solve the problems existing in the education sphere.
