The 2024 Baccalaureate exam was the easiest in the last 14 years with a pass rate of almost 80%. The subjects in Romanian, Mathematics, History, Physics or Geography were a joke, specified the specialized teachers consulted by “Adevărul” at the time. Here, however, the joke thickens, because there are more and more voices claiming that Bacul has been politicized. Of course, we are in the midst of an election year, and some have to do well in front of the voters.
The National Center for Policies and Evaluation in Education deals with the preparation of exam subjects
In short: the Ministry of Education is accused by several voices in the system of putting pressure on the experts who designed the subjects, trying to get them to lower the difficulty level of the exam.
Sources from the ministry, but also from several county school inspectorates, told Edupedu that, at the request of Minister Ligia Deca, a week before the start of the tests in the National Center for Policies and Evaluation in Education – the institution that elaborates the subjects – teachers appeared from the outside. They asked to see the classified subjects to check if the rural students could get at least a grade five. They justified their request by saying that they were trying to avoid the disaster from the Simulation. “It is the first time a minister has done such a thing. Some working groups were established, this was an interference. There are internal procedures of CNPEE and secrecy, when someone walks in the system”, say several voices who wished to remain anonymous.
Elena Lasconi, serious accusations against the ministry
Obviously, the visit of people from outside did not remain without echoes, their involvement “breathed”, and from here to the scandal was only one step.
What would have been the reason for the direct involvement of Ministry officials? “If you want to take the BAC, take the exam in the election year! This seems to be the recipe discovered by the current Education officials. After a disastrous result at the National Assessment, in the same country, in the same system, a miracle appears: 76.4% pass rate, before appeals”accuses Lasconi in a post on the official Facebook page.
It announced that the USR submitted a request to the Parliament for a meeting of a commission of inquiry regarding the intervention of Minister Deca in the subjects of the BAC.This, after a serious press investigation revealed the fact that the Minister of Education put pressure on the experts who design the exam subjects. Purpose: easy topics, low difficulty so that the simulation disaster doesn’t happen again.
Elena Lasconi asks Prime Minister Ciolacu to get involved and clarify the situation as soon as possible. “Marcel Ciolacu could clarify in a maximum of one day whether the Minister of Education abused his position on the subject of BAC subjects. But don’t bother with Education. That’s right, school never messed with him.” said Elena Lasconi, who is USR’s presidential candidate.
How to defend Ligia Deca
Ligia Deca reacted and stated that the Minister of Education has no involvement in what the subject development process means. The drafting process, she said, is managed by the National Policy Evaluation Center.
“Also, the National Commission manages what it means to carry out the evaluation process. Let me confess that I have also seen in the press different positions of the teaching staff that rather indicated an average level of the subjects. I don’t think the students who did well had a problem. But at the same time, if we look at the numbers, we see that they are not statistically significant, neither better nor worse than in recent years. So, from my point of view, at the level of the leadership of the ministry, there has never been an interference with the natural process of elaborating the subjects”.
On the principle “The dogs bark, the caravan passes”, no one admits anything
The Secretary of State responsible for organizing the Baccalaureate exams, Zoltán Kallós, also said that he did not call any teachers to see the Center’s subjects. “The subjects were ready, ten variants, a week before the special baccalaureate. No one saw them again until the morning of the test, when they were drawn. I didn’t make any calls. The procedure says this: that the subjects must be ready a week before the special Baccalaureate and then no one has access until the morning of the test“, Kallós told Edupedu.
Education expert: “The system is broken, the emperor is empty”
“The most relevant context in which I read these results is given by the very feedback of many teachers in the system, who say that the system is broken and that the king is empty and the elephant is in the room,” is the opinion of Marian Staș, expert in education.
“It is about people in the system who assume these statements. Namely, the fact that the subjects as such are formulated without integrity or with low integrity, so that the grades are high and things turn out well”, he also declared. Marian Staș also comes with an example.
“For example, subject I and subject II, which are worth 60 points out of 100, to which I add another 10 points ex officio, actually mean text recognition and comprehension. And in Romanian, and in Mathematics. They ask me all kinds of things that have nothing to do with how many books I know and how many readings I have gone through in Romanian or history. It seems to me incorrect from the point of view of docimology, that is, of evaluation. I mean, it’s a trick and a trick of the process, right from the get-go.”
“Subjects too easy, in my opinion”
And he is not the only one who points out that this year the Baccalaureate was child’s play. And the teachers consulted by “Truth” said the same thing.
“The subjects were easy, too easy in my opinion, accessible to all who learned enough, without traps, without putting the students in difficulty in any way. We are talking about topics that any student who is concerned about school and who has been paying attention in class can solve. Simple, clear requirements, without misleading children”said Ruxandra Achim, Romanian language teacher at “ILCaragiale” College in the Capital.
“I really don’t know why he gave them so easily,” added Denisa Tănăsescu, mathematics teacher at the same high school. “Whoever learned could easily take a daughter-in-law of 8“, Physics teacher Gabriela Alexandru also told us.
The bottom line? While some accuse vehemently, and others defend themselves by embracing “NO”, the elections are fast approaching. It is not yet known who will really benefit from this scandal and how much it will weigh in the voters’ decision. However, just the simple fact that a national exam of such scope has become a political battlefield brings, once again, the entire Romanian education system into derision.
