The Minister of Education, Daniel David, stated in a recently published podcast that the main cause of functional illiteracy among students is “lack of teacher training”. The claims drew criticism from teachers, who reacted immediately.
Minister of Education, Daniel David PHOTO Mediafax
“Don’t be upset, I don’t want to say 100%, but most of it. In the end, children come with a normal level of intelligence and a level of creativity, so to speak. It’s the job of teachers to, starting from a normality, transfer those skills to the children. You have no one to put the responsibility on but the teaching staff. And this is also true in pre-university, and I don’t want to spare those in higher education as well – when we make mistakes we also have a fairly high school dropout rate, and it’s all, so to speak, an important role that the university and teachers have”stated the Minister of Education, in a Save the Children Romania podcast.
Daniel David also emphasized that, if the students reach the eighth grade without acquiring basic skills, the fault cannot be sought elsewhere than among the teaching staff.
“If you have the child in school and you received him in the 5th grade and worked with him until the 8th grade, and in the 8th grade on the PISA or TIMSS tests he appears in the zone of functional illiteracy, being at school… Well, don’t get upset, who is to blame?”he said.
The teachers’ reaction
The Argeșean Pre-University Education Union (SIPA) Muntenia qualified right “slanderous, unfair and offensive” the minister’s statements and requested their withdrawal, as well as an apology to Romanian teachers.
“Such a claim is unfounded, unfair and deeply offensive to the hundreds of thousands of teachers who, despite a chronically underfunded system for over 35 years, continue to carry out their work with professionalism, dedication and personal sacrifice”SIPA sent through a press release sent to Edupedu.ro.
According to the union, the real causes of functional illiteracy are: the lack of a coherent education policy, the chronic underfunding of the system, outdated textbooks and an overloaded curriculum, the large number of students in classes, as well as the legislative instability generated by the succession of ministers who impose “reforms” without continuity.
SIPA Muntenia emphasized that Romania has never respected the legal commitment to allocate a minimum of 6% of GDP to education, and the continuous training of teachers is, in many cases, “formal, underfunded and incoherent”.
“It is inadmissible for the Minister of Education to blame the teaching staff, instead of taking government responsibility for the failure of educational policies that, for decades, have ignored the realities in schools”the statement also states.
