Almost 12,000 teachers from Bucharest and the country declared their incomes to ANAF last year. We are talking about a total amount of 169 million lei, money obtained only from meditation.
Teachers meditate not one student at a time, but groups. Photo source: archive
And Romania has approximately 180,000 teachers. So, officially, only 6.6% of all teachers who teach in Romanian schools give meditations. In reality, however, their number is much higher, say the parents.
Concretely, the highest incomes from meditations were declared by Bucharest teachers who earned 40,779,742 lei. That means just over 8 million euros. This amount was collected – in total – by 1,935 people. The teachers from Sibiu (15,638,196 lei), Cluj (14,540,072 lei), Timiș (7,441,885 lei) and Prahova (6,367,430 lei) are among the teachers with the highest collected and declared incomes.
In terms of the number of teachers who declared the income obtained from meditation in the top, after Bucharest, those from Cluj, Iași, Timiș and Prahova are ranked. In total there are 11,734 people who pay tax on meditations.
When you have a hard time at math… you take a lot of money out of your pocket
Dan Tita, the president of the Federation of Parents from Sector 1 of the Capital, told ADevărul that the price charged by teachers varies from case to case. “It matters the name of the teacher, how well he is rated, what school, high school or college he teaches at, whether the school is in an urban or rural environment, the subject he teaches, the level for which he prepares the children matters. But, generally speaking, the prices in sector 1, for example, start from 100-150 lei per hour and can reach up to 250-300 lei. I am referring to the important subjects for exams such as Romanian Language and Mathematics and to the teachers who teach at national colleges, where the level is high, above average”.
The father told us that recently online meditations have exploded. “After the pandemic, they realized the benefits of distance school. They realized that they could gather more students around the laptops. The price of an online session can reach up to 250 lei. If we do a simple calculation..can you figure out how much a teacher earns from these kids in just one hour?”
For foreign languages, which are also required in the national exams, the amounts are lower. “An English or French session could cost from 60, 70 lei. Here the competition is greater, as a lot of online courses have appeared that students can access”.
But students also meditate on other subjects. And if we think that in their case the prices would be lower, we are wrong. “A child who gets to a good or very good high school will experience a shock: the teachers who also teach other subjects such as Chemistry, Physics, History, Geography, etc. have very high demands. The level in the classroom is sometimes so high, the demands so high that the students cannot cope with the demands and need extra help. This is how we end up in the situation where a 9th or 10th grade student meditates on..History or Chemistry, let’s say. And this is how they are forced to take other money out of their pockets in order not to remain corrigent. The prices are between 100 and 120 lei per hour or per session. The meeting can be an hour and a half or two hours. It depends”.
Why do we meditate our children since the third grade? To enter the College
Dan Tita told us that there are children who meditate starting from the primary grades up to the twelfth grade inclusive. “There are students who have been meditating since the 3rd grade, who leave the dolls and cars aside and open the collection of mathematics. There are those children who seem to have forgotten to be children. I am referring, more precisely, to those who will take the college entrance exam in the 5th grade. There are children who have been preparing for that exam for years. And I do it even with the professors of the respective colleges, who design the topics and who correct the papers. Otherwise, they would have no chance of being admitted, even if they are very good”.
The parent believes that these entrance exams, which are as difficult as the Olympics, force parents to take their children to meditation.
“The subjects are designed by the teachers in the respective school. Basically, they decide the level of the students. And everything is done with the tacit consent of the Ministry. As long as the ministry does not regulate this procedure and does not come up with any changes, the teachers will decide who passes the exam and who does not. I had a case reported by a mother a few years ago. He had meditated on his child with a teacher from that college, but who had retired a few years ago, was no longer in the system and had somehow lost contact with his colleagues. The teacher did not prepare the child according to current subject models, and the student was rejected in the exam. He would have needed a few hundred more to pass. After the scandal came out, after the mother filed a complaint, filed a complaint with the inspectorate, the child was admitted to the minister”says Dan Tita.
The father came up with another example: “A teacher from a college in sector 1 does meditations with children of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades precisely for the access, in the 5th grade, to that college. He does “1 to 1″ meditations, that is, with each child separately, he does not prepare several at once. And he takes 200 lei per hour. This was the rate last year, now it may have become more expensive. And there are children, I am now referring to the general way, which also meditates two or three times a week”.
Dan Tita he told us that an internal exam could be organized soon for the 9th grade as well. “And see meditations then! In four years, the colleges will be able to organize the 9th grade entrance exam prior to the national assessment. The colleges will also make their own selection of the 9th grade, not only the 6th”.
Parallel education does not pave the way to success
Iuliana Constantinescu, president of the Parents’ Association of the “Lucian Blaga” high school in Bucharest, stated for Adevărul that parents make huge efforts for the private education of their children.
“If we think that a session starts from 100-150 lei, if we think that students meditate several times a week, I think that this money could be a big burden on the shoulders of families. I know parents who make considerable financial efforts, some of them even do bank loans, to spare every penny for other family expenses, to be able to bear these costs. These people realize that a child would not stand a chance without additional training. There are students who don’t cope in class, others who wouldn’t take the National Assessment, the Baccalaureate or wouldn’t enter college”, explained Iuliana Constantinescu.
But even so, pondering for years, no one can guarantee that these children will be successful further on. Dan Tita explains the reason. “In the meditations, we work on exercise models, on subject models. Children learn mechanically. They are little slaves. If you take them out of those patterns, out of their comfort zone, and put them in front of new situations, they won’t know what to do. These kids study hard, take their exams, then forget everything they’ve learned. This happens precisely because they have not been trained to judge, to analyze, to think deeply, to make logical associations and to issue value judgments”.
Iuliana Constantinescu believes that we have reached the point where we can talk about a parallel education. “Students receiving intensive training outside of school rather than in school, as would be natural. The causes are multiple, starting with the poor training of teaching staff. We have many substitute teachers or who teach complementary subjects to the one for which they have specially prepared. We have many retired teachers who are struggling to cope with a teaching activity beyond the retirement age. we teachers totally disinterested, and we also have that category of teachers who put extremely much pressure and who behave like a dictator in the classroom, precisely to force the children to turn to meditation”, says Iuliana Constantinescu.
According to the Code of Ethics, teachers are not allowed to meditate on their students in class. Moreover, teachers are obliged, starting from this calendar year, to admit in writing that their students in the class they teach are not meditating. This statement can be sent to schools by the end of December. Teachers are also required by law to declare their income, as are all self-employed persons. These amounts of money are taxable.
