The Minister of Education, Daniel David, stated that the new framework plans for the high school will make students’ timetables much more flexible. And that’s because, depending on the specifics of the subject and the age of the children, some teachers could teach modularly. This implies that the hours intended for certain subjects are combined, and the teaching is done intensively. Otherwise, it would be an unnecessary waste of time.
Daniel David, Minister of Education. Archive
“The framework plans that we are going to propose come with this idea of making the schedule very flexible, although we were used to having one or two hours every week for several weeks (…). If some teachers, depending on the specifics of the subject and the age of the students, depending on the class, want to make modules, they could organize themselves like this. So, in other words, there is this flexibility”.
However, this option of teaching the subject must be decided together with the students and parents. “There is no psychopedagogical thing that says it’s stupid to do modular”the minister also specified.
Combining hours is indicated in the case of disciplines that have allocated one, maximum two hours per week. “If it’s not very intensive, but one hour a week, you can ask yourself, ‘aren’t we wasting our time?’, so to speak. On the other hand, if I bring those hours into two weeks and do that intensively, I start to connect things and contents better. So, psychopedagogically, there are both models. And the framework plans we propose encourage this flexibility at the high school level. It exists even now. In some areas this is also used for certain subjects that are part of the school’s offer and from which the student chooses. But in the framework plans I will make it a principle, so to speak, this flexibility will be very important”.
The minister said that the reduction of the material taught in the classroom is being taken into account, but at the same time, “we have among the fewest weeks of school. It is very difficult to have few subjects and few weeks of school, and to want to cover relevant content for various social aspects”. Daniel David also mentioned that the common core will also undergo changes, which will be much better thought out to cover general culture on the one hand, and basic skills on the other. “It will increase the weight of the specialized component, which is very important, especially in large classes, the 11th and 12th grades, and will increase the component related to the choice that the student can make from the school’s offer, which is aimed at his interests personal.
The minister believes that the school is, after all, aimed at young people who enter the adolescence phase and have two or three great needs, among them the search for identity. “And then, there at counseling-orientation, we need to help them with self-knowledge and personal development. They are willing to try risky things and we need to prevent this with healthy lifestyle approaches that prevent and block the serious things we see right now: drug use, smoking, alcohol, unhealthy eating.”
The journey of framework plans, from sketch to implementation
The minister said that the new framework plans will be implemented in the year 2026, after all the details and all aspects will be worked out. “After we work on the curricula, the training programs for teachers must be started and also, in my opinion, the textbooks must be rethought”. Practically, if this term will be respected, the first students who will learn according to the new school programs will be the students who are now in the 7th grade. “When you have this kind of change in the system, there are two big ways. Some ministers prefer an expert approach. That is, they go with the group of experts and they determine what the framework plans are. After that I do a debate, after which I publish them.. that only they, as experts, know what is happening and I let them go. There are others who take a bottom-up approach. That is, we don’t go with experts in this field, with people from education sciences, but we talk with inspectors, teachers and see from the bottom up what is born and what will be”. The minister stated that he does not agree with these approaches. He stated that the expert group he formed included both education specialists and people from the system. “After that you have a really public and national debate. Because it is very likely that from that debate, things will emerge that actually help you to have an even better project”.
Then, after receiving these suggestions, the team of experts formed at the level of the Ministry of Education will analyze them and take over what could be integrated into the framework plans. “After you have the final acceptance from the experts, the minister assumes the framework plans, on the idea that not everyone will be satisfied but it is the best from the perspective of the experts we have and that satisfies the best, not perfect, but the most well the needs that the system has”.
Daniel David, Minister of Education: “I have seen the framework plans and they are not starting from scratch”
The minister confessed that he saw the framework plans made by the former minister’s team, Ligia Deca, and they don’t even start from scratch. “I’ve seen them and they’re not starting from scratch. I went from what the former minister’s team did, I as a minister looked over them. I start discussing them with my advisors and the experts I have in the task force. Very likely, after January 20 we will put them up for public debate. I also want to do a national debate. We will have four debates in the four academic centers: in Bucharest, Cluj, Iași and Timișoara, in which all the relevant actors who want to participate, from students, teachers, parents, local authorities – very important, minister David also specified.
