Romania

Partners and Experts in Romania

None.

Romania in a nutshell

Romania (archaic: Rumania, Roumania; Romanian: România) is a country located in Southeastern and Central Europe, north of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Almost all of the Danube Delta is located within its territory. It shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova to the northeast, and Bulgaria to the south.

Source : http://www.cia.gov

The territory's recorded history includes periods of rule by Dacians, the Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. As a nation-state, the country was formed by the merging of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859 and it gained recognition of its independence in 1878. Later, in 1918, they were joined by Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia. At the end of World War II, parts of its territories (roughly the present day Moldova) were occupied by the USSR and Romania became a member of the Warsaw Pact. With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Romania started a series of political and economic reforms. After a decade of post-revolution economic problems, Romania made economic reforms such as low flat tax rates in 2005 and joined the European Union on January 1, 2007. While Romania's income level remains one of the lowest in the European Union, reforms have increased the growth speed. Romania is now an upper-middle income country economy.

Romania has the 9th largest territory and the 7th largest population (with 21.5 million people) among the European Union member states.

Its capital and largest city is Bucharest (Romanian: Bucureşti), the 6th largest city in the EU with 1.9 million people.

In 2007, Sibiu, a city in Transylvania, was chosen as a European Capital of Culture.

Romania also joined NATO on March 29, 2004, and is also a member of the Latin Union, of the Francophonie of the OSCE and an associate member of the CPLP.

Romania is a semi-presidential unitary state.

Education in Romania

(sourced from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania)

According to the Law on Education adopted in 1995, the education system is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Research. Each level has its own form of organization and is subject to different legislation.

1. Kindergarten is optional for children between 3 and 6 years old.
2. Schooling starts at age 7 (sometimes 6), and is compulsory until the 10th grade (which usually corresponds to the age of 17 or 16).[111] Primary and secondary education are divided into 12 or 13 grades.
3. Higher education is aligned with the European higher education area.

Aside from the official schooling system, and the recently-added private equivalents, there exists a semi-legal, informal, fully private tutoring system. Tutoring is mostly used during secondary as a preparation for the various examinations, which are notoriously difficult. Tutoring is widespread, and it can be considered a part of the Education System. It has subsisted and even prospered during the Communist regime.

In 2004, some 4.4 million of the population was enrolled in school. Out of these, 650,000 were in kindergarten, 3.11 million (14% of population) in primary and secondary level, and 650,000 (3% of population) in tertiary level (universities).

In the same year, the adult literacy rate was 97.3% (45th worldwide), while the combined gross enrollment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schools was 75% (52nd worldwide).

The results of the PISA assessment study in schools for the year 2000 placed Romania on the 34th rank out of 42 participant countries with a general weighted score of 432 representing 85% of the mean OECD score.

Romanian high school curricula have recently been censored and restructured, owing to a growing trend of religious conservatism. In 2006, the theory of evolution, which had been taught since the country's Communist era, was dropped from the compulsory curriculum nationwide. Philosophical writers critical of religion, such as Voltaire and Camus have also been removed from the philosophy curriculum.

For more details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_educational_system but note the caveats.

There is an authoritative recent report at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTROMANIA/Resources/EducationPolicyNote.pdf

Schools in Romania

A complete list of schools in Romania is provided by Romaniaschool.com

Wikipedia provides also a list of Secondary schools in the country at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_secondary_schools_in_Romania

Further and Higher Education

Universities in Romania

(sourced from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_educational_system - note that the article is very critical of universities as well as of schools)

The first modern Romanian universities were:

• University of Iaşi (founded 1860)
• University of Bucharest (founded 1864)
• Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj (founded 1872)

Now there are many universities in the country, both public and private - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_Romania

Around 40 have Wikipedia entries - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Universities_in_Romania

According to the Academic Ranking of World Universities, in 2006 no Romanian university was included in the first 500 top universities world wide. Using similar methodology to these rankings, it was reported that the best placed Romanian university, Bucharest University, attained the half score of the last university in the world top 500.

ICT in education initiatives

Interesting Programmes

CODECS Romania

The Open University Business School has been offering courses in Romania for almost fifteen years in partnership with The Centre for Open Distance Education for the Civil Society (CODEDS), a major provider of management education in Romania. CODECS aim to provide a high quality and internationally recognised programme of management education for active managers in the emerging free market economy.

The internationally recognised Master of Business Administration (MBA), presented in English, provides opportunities for networking locally at regular seminars and internationally, both at residential schools and online, with managers studying the programme around the world. Seminars are presented by CODECS and OU Business School lecturers who have management and business experience. There are 151 MBA alumni in Romania.

The Open University Business School's Professional Certificate and Professional Diploma in Management programmes are presented in Romanian through a network of twelve Regional Centres across Romania. Each year over a thousand students study these programmes; many students then progress onto the MBA Programme.

Polytechnic University of Timisoara

The Polytechnic University of Timisoara (Universitatea 'Politehnica' din Timişoara) is located in Timişoara, Romania. Founded in 1920, it is one of the largest technical universities in Central/ Eastern Europe. The university has 10 faculties and several independent departments.

The Polytechnic University of Timisoara is the co-ordinator of the ViCaDiS (the Virtual Campus for Digital Students) project of the Erasmus Lifelong Learning Programme.

The Polytechnic University of Timisoara web site is at http://www.upt.ro/english/index.php

The Regional Distance Education Centre (CSID) has been, since 1998, a department of the Polytechnic University of Timisoara which aims to organise, support and supervise all distance education in the university.

The web site is at http://www.csid.upt.ro

Re.ViCa Case-study

None.

References

• Eurydice National system overview on education systems in Europe, December 2011
• Eurybase, The Information Database on Education Systems in Europe: The Education System in Romania, 2008/09
• Good reference to elearning situtaion in Romania: http://www.eenovate.info/documents/Paths%20of%20Developing%20E-learning%20Programmes%20in%20Romania.pdf

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