IOANA ANDREESCU

These students are part of the top 30% of students in their class, in descending order of GPAs, and receive the corresponding 450 lei for the merit scholarship.

This means that, in the case of the first two with grades below 1.99, the remaining 70% of students in the class only have grades of 1.

At the level of Iași county, according to data provided to "Ziarul de Iaşi" by the County School Inspectorate (ISJ) Iași, 65,274 scholarships are awarded.

Among these, 127 are Olympic excellence scholarships, of which 20 are represented by Olympic excellence scholarships I and 107 by Olympic excellence scholarships II.

In addition, there are 39,603 social scholarships, 4,924 technological scholarships and 42 scholarships for underage mothers. The 20,578 merit scholarships have sparked the most controversy, as no less than 429 students in Iași county receiving them have GPAs below 5.

The GPA below 5, enough for school scholarships in 2023

"Ziarul de Iași" asked the County School Inspectorate for the number of beneficiaries of merit scholarships in the county based on GPA ranges.

Out of the 20,578 merit scholarships awarded in Iași county, 144 are offered to students who have won prizes in olympiads, school competitions and extracurricular activities.

Excluding scholarships offered for student awards, we see that approximately half, precisely 10,351, are received by students with GPAs between 9.50 and 10.

The rest are awarded to students with GPAs lower than 9.49. Thus, we are talking about 4,116 scholarships for those with GPAs between 9.00 and 9.49, 2,909 scholarships for those with GPAs between 8 and 8.99 and 1,758 scholarships for students with GPAs between 7.00 and 7.99.

1,300 students in Iași county receive a merit scholarship even if their GPA or admission average for the ninth grade is below 7.00.

According to the County School Inspectorate Iași, there are 617 beneficiaries of merit scholarships for GPAs between 6.00 and 6.99 and 254 for GPAs between 5.00 and 5.99. However, in Iași county, there are students whose GPA does not exceed 4.99, and they received the corresponding 450 lei for the merit scholarship.

We are talking about 292 students with GPAs between 4.00 and 4.99, 109 with GPAs between 3.00 and 3.99, 26 with GPAs between 2.00 and 2.99, and even two students GPAs below 1.99.

For the 2023-2024 school year, the Ministry of Education in Romania has prepared a new methodology for awarding school scholarships. The requirement to have a GPA above 9.50 to receive a scholarship has been removed, the only condition being that the student be in the top third of the class.

The new methodology eliminates the study and the performance scholarship, introducing the technological and the Olympic scholarship instead. Thus, the social scholarship is 300 lei per month, the merit scholarship is 450 lei per month, the technological scholarship is valued at 300 lei per month and the Olympic excellence scholarship starts at 700 lei per month for national stages and can go up to 3,000 lei per month for international stages.

At the national level, according to data from the Ministry of Education, 8,494 students with GPAs below 5 receive a merit scholarship. Of these, 5,250 have GPAs between 4.00 and 4.99, 2,382 have GPAs between 3.00 and 3.99, 704 between 2.00 and 2.99 and 158 below 2.