The Baccalaureate in Mathematics has become easier in the last ten years, and the subjects are designed in such a way that the pass rate does not decrease. This is the conclusion of a teacher with decades of experience in the department. Georgeta Mirică, a Mathematics teacher who retired after the 2024-2025 school year, says that the pandemic removed from the curriculum the very chapters that separated the compulsive students from the rest, and the return to the full curriculum from 2023 remained, in practice, only on paper.
In 2015 was the first practical application of a new program, and between 2016 and 2019 the structure and content did not change.
“I remember a guy at mate-info who sat for three hours struggling with a parametric integral. Now if you give them something like that, they stare like a calf at the gate. Back then, at least the structure was consistent. You knew what to expect. And the difficulty was decent – neither too easy nor impossible“, shows the teacher for “Adevărul”.
The transformations of the pandemic led to “a baccalaureate of salvation”
The year 2020 brought the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Baccalaureate moved to the autumn session.
Although the core syllabus remained that of 2014, the authorities introduced temporary exceptions, removing entire chapters. The exceptions were also extended in 2021, when a ministerial order brought an adjustment for certain pedagogical specializations, but without changing the structure of the test itself.
“The pandemic was a disaster, that’s clear. But what did the gentlemen from the ministry do? They removed from the syllabus exactly the chapters that separated the compulsive students from the rest. And then what came out? A Baccalaureate of salvation“, adds the teacher.
What did the return to the pre-pandemic program bring?
In 2022, the pandemic exceptions were gradually lifted, and starting with the 2023 Baccalaureate, the Ministry of Education announced the official return to the full pre-pandemic programs.
The minister at the time, Sorin Cîmpeanu, had declared that school is no longer interrupted, so the curriculum must be fully reactivated. According to order 5242/2022, the exam programs remained those of 2014, and the temporarily removed concepts re-entered the evaluation.
Even so, teacher Georgeta Mirică does not see a real return to the rigors of the past.
“Theoretically, from 2023 it will return to the full program. Mr. Cîmpeanu said “we are returning to normality”. But in practice? The subjects are made as if they do not offend anyone. The same types of exercises are repeated year after year: simple matrices, linear functions, trivial probabilities. Where is abstract algebra? Where are polynomials with complex roots? They are afraid that the small promotion will come out. So we wake up with a baccalaureate that no longer selects anything”said the teacher.
“Now you also get points if you guess the answer”
The years 2024 and 2025 did not bring major legislative news. Order 6156/31.08.2023 explicitly confirmed that the Baccalaureate programs for Mathematics remain the ones from 2014, and until 2025 no substantive change was published.
In other words, the exam continued to take place under the same classical structure. Georgeta Mirică, however, draws attention to an aspect even more serious than the content of the subjects: the way of correction and the widening of the scales.
“What about the scale? It has been widened to include any answer. Now you also get points if you intuit the answer. Here is the reality: in 2015, a 7 in Mathematics meant that you knew well. Now students are no longer motivated to learn serious Mathematics because they know that the Baccalaureate is basically a formality.
We, the teachers, are put between a rock and a hard place – if we teach harder, the students complain that they “don’t enter the baccalaureate”. If we teach lightly, we make a mockery of the teaching profession and teach them nothing. But it’s not our fault or the students’, it’s the educational system’s fault“, concludes the Mathematics teacher.
