The majority do not know how to write in Romanian and randomly marked answers on math questions. Including second-grade exercises. Some teachers say it won't be as bad in the June exam, but that's only because many weak students will simply drop out of school.

There is a major imbalance, according to voices in education, between the "balanced" subjects, as Minister Deca called them, and the grades that discredit the entire system.

Marian Staș, founder of an educational program: "The results now represent a much less distorted mirror of how much real knowledge the children have and how much mathematics the teachers genuinely teach. We don't read, we don't write... Spelling imposes many problems... the spelling exercise is very widespread, and I sadly noted that a consistent percentage of teachers fall into the same trap".

Compared to last year, when 40% of eighth-grade students scored below 5 in the simulation, the current percentage is approaching almost 58%. It was a cold shower, especially for families paying at least 1,500 lei per month for private tutoring. Digitalized correction reveals that most papers are at the level of primary school. Even so, some teachers admit that they have awarded extra points to students beyond the grading criteria.

Three months before finishing the eighth grade, 63% of students received nothing in terms of spelling points according to the grading criteria. Most commonly, because they do not write with a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence and the names of people. 73% received no points for punctuation. They either leave the sentence hanging or randomly place commas, periods, question marks... 69% of candidates make disagreements between different parts of speech and spelling mistakes. As for mathematics, one in 5 students missed the correct answer to this second-grade exercise. It involves the order of operations... first, we calculate what's in parentheses, followed by multiplications and divisions, and ultimately, additions and subtractions, in the order of their occurrence.

In the last geometry exercise, three-quarters of the children received a total of 0 points.

Cătălin Ciupală, math teacher: "These children will not participate in the National Assessment, many of them".

Reporter: What solutions are there for children who have the misfortune of having unprepared, absent and disinterested teachers?

Cătălin Ciupală, math teacher: "The solution? I don't know. But it's a tragedy! For 10-15 years, they should have done didactic master's degrees, because through didactic master's, teachers learn both the subject and child psychology! Anyone can teach some calculations, some simple fractions... but not everyone can get into the minds of children".

The huge percentage of poorly prepared students theoretically obliges education leaders to eliminate those lacking vocation and responsibility for their role in the classroom. Regrettably, once again, they failed to meet the deadline for finalizing the teacher performance evaluation method. In the best-case scenario, the project will be ready only in August.