National exams may become less relevant than classroom grades. The Romanian Education Minister wants national exams to be less relevant and to focus more on the grades obtained in class.

The news is upsetting to teachers with good results, who expect, in the future, an inflation of undeserved averages just to hide the harsh reality of education, according to them.

After a working visit in Mureș, Minister Ligia Deca made a surprising statement.

"Our aim, or at least that of the Romanian education system, as I see it, should be to decrease the significance of these end-of-cycle exams, the National Evaluation and Baccalaureate, and instead, we could take into account assessments made along the school year", said the Minister of Education.

We are talking, obviously, about yearly averages. It would be a historic first for the Baccalaureate, where the final grade has always been calculated from the grades obtained in 4, 5 or 6 subjects. Many teachers say it is an attempt to "embellish" the statistics - most likely disastrous - from the end of the summer session.

There are such huge differences between two classes, let alone between two high schools, between rural and urban ones. For me, as a high school principal, it's a blur. 'Diploma factories' will appear. Experience demonstrates that we are unmistakably regressing. We've been seeking these answers for 35 years. Law after law has been drafted, and now we realize it's not what's required".

The intention to reduce the relevance of national exams and to increase the importance of classroom grades was announced just a few weeks after the mock exams.

As a reminder, 58% of eighth-grade students scored below 5 on the math test, and over half of twelfth-grade students would not pass the high school graduation exam if they had to take it now.

Furthermore, it was only last year, coinciding with the National Evaluation, that the system ceased to include a percentage of the fifth to eighth grade GPA into the high school admission score. Additionally, the new education legislation proposes the contrary - the implementation of an entrance examination for reputable high schools, distinct from the national evaluation.

Meanwhile, some teachers are calling for the immediate exclusion from the exams of the teachers who have made blatant mistakes in marking the mock exams.

"There is still a certain degree of vulnerability in the way teachers are selected. There should be a higher degree of specialization in appeals because correction comes into play there. If one out of 4 grades was significantly different, then the teacher has a major problem with his/her ability to evaluate".

At present, priority in exam registration is given to those who participated in correcting during the mock exams, regardless of their performance. Regarding the ministry's long-term vision for high school, it suggests reducing the curriculum, taking inspiration from Poland's model. This entails excluding certain chapters from the current textbooks and allocating more time to consolidating lessons.