Educational process is organised by primary classes teachers, trained in pedagogical colleges and universities (from the total number of primary classes teachers 55.1 % have university education, the others – special secondary education).

Ministry of Education and science developed external evaluation objectives for 2 subjects: mathematics and Romanian language, which are implemented by external evaluation specialists at the end of primary cycle. Evaluation ends with a detailed report, distributed among schools for analysis and appreciation of the situation.

Evaluation aims to analyse educational quality, indicating the level of implementation of evaluated objectives.

Gymnasium education is compulsory and is organised as full-time education, comprising V-IX classes.

Gymnasium education provides with development of attitudes and intellectual abilities of the pupil, regarded as direct definitive level in personal formation, vocational orientation and training for lyceum or professional education.

Access to gymnasium education for all children, graduated from the IV class of primary education, is free and not competition-based. Gymnasium education ends with graduation examinations, composed from several tests, awarding at the end a certificate of gymnasium education.

• A curriculum for gymnasium education is already developed, it will be implemented soon.
• Provision with textbooks. Gymnasia are provided with textbooks edited in Romania until now. A process of development of local school textbooks for gymnasia began.
• Direction for Evaluation was created in frame of MES, evaluation of some school subjects in primary education was already performed.
• Provision with didactical personnel is hardly made, because of the lack of motivation for pedagogical specialties leavers (small wages, paid with large delays, lack of the possibility for taking preferential credits with low interest, lack of space for living etc.).

From the table above we can see that the number of gymnasia remains constant, with insignificant changes during the last 5 years, as well as the number of pupils in gymnasium education, while the number of teachers working in it, is decreasing.

Expenditures, allocated from the budget for training of a pupil from gymnasium, increased, but taking into account devalorisation of the national currency, we can say that, in comparison to 1995, they decreased. The financing is made centrally, from the republic budget. According to the law on Education, it must be not less than 7% of GDP. Taking into account small Gross Domestic Product of Moldova, finances allocated for education are insufficient.

Money is not allocated any more for editing didactical materials for subjects in schools, for buying school furniture. Actually, education is financed only on the level of wages. But even here with large delays from some months to a year or more.

Program and plans of studies were reviewed and they correspond to modern demands. The week of studies is 5 days. A new educational plan for gymnasium education was developed and approved. It is followed by some essential improvements to the educational plan:

• educational plan will assure personality forming according to the potential of the latter and demands of the democratic society;
• it views educational training in prospect of continuing education, of interdisciplinary approach and curriculum as a concept;
• it provides with curriculum coherence between school levels and steps, states a minimal number of subjects and hours per week in every class;
• it states the invariant nucleus (minimum of subjects and hours) and curriculum according to the decision of school (maximum of subjects and hours), optional curriculum;
• it offers the possibility of equilibrating the proportion of school subjects in frame of educational system, school subjects integration in the horizontal and vertical directions (principle of complexity);
• school subjects regard physiological, psychological and cognitive particularities of children, educational standards (primary-gymnasium education, functionality principle);
• it envisages fixing of an equilibrated number of school disciplines and time units, which would create a more productive educational situation on potential level of pupil (decongestion principle);
• it views every pupil’s right for maximum valuation of his potential in a respective rhythm (equality of chances principle);
• every educational unit is free to develop its own educational plan, which includes minimal and maximal number of hours for every subject, type of the school, educational year (flexibility and centralisation principle).

Problems, faced by gymnasium education, are different.

One of the most urgent problems of the gymnasium education is vocational orientation. We can state that vocational education, in school in general, and in gymnasium in particular, is lacking.

4.7 thousand pupils of the age 7-16, who don’t attend school, were registered on the 1 September 1999 (in 1997 – respectively 4.5 thousand), from them 80% are from rural localities. Now, the fact that pupils schooling is compulsory, slips from the control.

Until 1990 involving in school of 7 year-old children wasn’t a problem and it attained 100%, but during the last years children, not involved in school, were registered. So, according to operative MES data 1993 children of 7 years remained uninvolved in school on 1 September 1999, which is 29.3 % from the total number of children of 7-16 years, who remained out of school.

Due to the difficult economical situation, through which Moldova is now passing, the difference between the village and town school is becoming significant at economical, social and cultural level. In such conditions when rural localities are disconnected from the electrical network for 20 hours from 24, we can’t talk about efficiency of the training and educational process. Population at the school age from rural localities doesn’t have access to the necessary information, broadcast through the radio, TV, press. But conditions of functioning of the most rural schools, when they are not heated and don’t electrical energy, have a negative impact on the quality of education. Difficult financial situation of the teachers and parents reduces a lot for many pupils the access for education. A phenomenon of the school abandon appears in these conditions. One of the causes of the abandon is linked to problem of population migration. Not having means for existence, many parents abandon families and leave abroad for job. Children, being left to the care of grandparents and relatives, for many times leave their studies, beg in the streets or commit delinquency.

One of the factors leading to decrease of the schooling level is the lack of school transport. Children of the school age from the rural area, who don’t have a educational institution in the place of residence, have to walk a distance of 5-6 km afoot in order to reach the nearest school.

The lack of school alimentation for pupils in the most of rural schools also influences negatively upon the educational and schooling process. In many cases the dinner offered in schools was a rescue for children in order to survive.

The same is with medical services, offered some time ago in secondary educational institutions and disappeared now because of the health care system reform, it contributes to increasing of the number of uninvolved in school. So, to make a conclusion, we can say that difficult social-economical conditions have an impact on schooling and lead to increase in every year of the number of children, abandoning their studies.

In conditions of society pauperisation even the protection poor families is not corresponding. Social aid, granted to disfavoured families is ridiculous, comparing to excessive prices of the goods and food. So, the social aid, for the most times granted with large delays, is not able to cover those expenditures for keeping and schooling of children.

Mentioning the access to textbooks, it must be noticed that, before 1998, children and students were provided with textbooks for free, as in frame of pre-university education, as well in frame of university, except private education. Though during the 90-s students of specialised colleges, those from universities, lyceum and technical-vocational and trade schools, had to buy textbooks. This is explained, first of all, by a more frequent use of alternative textbooks, which are lacking in the scheme of free provision, by appearance of new subjects of study, in educational program of lyceums, vocational and trade schools, colleges and universities, educational de-politisation on every level, together with refusal of the communist doctrine in education. Another cause, the main one, is lack of financial means, which would allow to the state to complete existing fund of textbooks from school and university libraries, as with new textbooks, as with reedited ones.

In these circumstances Government of Republic of Moldova in 1996 was forced to ask for aid from World Bank, taking a preferential credit, in hard conditions, for educational reforming, which envisages also editing of new textbooks, created on the base of national curriculum, developed in the light of educational reform.

So, children from III and IV forms are provided with textbooks in frame of the Scheme for leasing textbooks (SLT), which functioning is stipulated in conditions of crediting the Reform Project. SLT was implemented in the school year 1998-1999, it is based on Decision of the Government N 448 "Regarding provision with textbooks of children from primary and gymnasium education", 9 April 1998. At the beginning of the school year 1999-2000, 17 new books for primary classes of national and minority schools were edited. In SLT textbooks, developed according to the new curriculum, are included. Their edition was competition-based. SLT allows provision with textbooks in proportion of 105 to 100, until the first reediting, when schools will command the necessary number of books. However, this doesn’t mean that all pupils are provided with textbooks. Only pupils, whose parents paid tax for the textbooks, will have them. For children from socially vulnerable families a partial subvention of taxes from local budgets is foreseen, which cannot actually be applied because of lack of financial resources. Local authorities, schools resort to donors, so, for the most times, those children also have textbooks.

Until completion of the fund, intended for primary and gymnasium education, with new recently developed textbooks, existing textbooks from school libraries are used. During 90-s, completion of the funds with textbooks for primary, gymnasium, lyceum and vocational training, was made due to the donations of didactical material from Romania, which allowed until now provision of the whole pre-university cycle with textbooks in proportion of 93%-105%.

Another vulnerable aspect of the problem of access of all pupils for textbooks is wear level of textbooks from library funds, which passed the stabled period of usage – 4 years, so that all editions, published during years 1990-1998 continue to be used.

The problem of textbooks for primary cycle, as well as for gymnasium cycle, will be solved until 2003, so the access for children to free gymnasium education will be facilitated.

Another unsolved problem is lack of textbooks for vision and speech disease. Only 25%-30% from this category of children have textbooks, but insufficiency in financial resources and specialists in this area delays appearance of necessary textbooks.

The problem of textbooks is worsened also because of the life level of the population, which is in permanent decrease, so a less number of children have the access to it.

Another vulnerable aspect of the problem is wear level of school libraries fund, which passed for about 2-3 times the stabled period of usage – 4 years.

School libraries are not computerised, so they can neither follow modern informational technologies, nor integrate in international informational cycle, nor implement international standards.

The Government of Republic of Moldova makes efforts to ameliorate the situation through comprehension of the problems and searching adequate solutions. Editing of 103 books in circulation of 116106 copies of national and universal literature, which would complete school libraries funds, is envisaged for the period 1999-2001.

At the moment, the fund of school libraries is completed mostly due to the donations.

• Analysis: access – obtained results.

The table above proves the fact that annual losses of the contingent with different motivation (migration, abandon, mortality etc.) are estimated at about 5 thousand pupils.

the table shows that the number of pupils, uninvolved in school and of those repeating the year, is increasing with every year, the fact, caused by worsening of the life conditions of the population in Republic of Moldova, as well as by the fact that some children are not able to master one or more subjects. The lack of didactical personnel in schools, mainly in rural schools, leads to increasing of the hours, when the child is not involved in educational process. Difficult life conditions are the cause of not missing from the lessons, and these provoke repeatancy, which is increasing now. Pedagogical collectives’ strikes, caused by delays in paying the wages even worsen the situation of bad pupils, which increases the numbers of pupils-repeatants. From the above table we can see that the phenomenon exists and is broadening.

Accessibility in context of all types and forms of training.

In Republic of Moldova, beside the training process itself, there exist other forms of education:

• Extra-school education, comprising artistic, sport and technical education.
• Artistic education comprises musical and plastic arts schools. At the actual stage many these are closing, especially in rural localities, and those from towns hardly resist to austere conditions.
• Sport schools remained only on the republican level. The others were closed. The state undertakes measures to recover them, but without significant results.
• There are still some centres of young technicians in towns and former regional centres. At the moment they are closing.
• Special education is implemented in special schools, divided according to demands of children with special problems:

Because of the abandon of the employment place by the didactical personnel, need in them grew in schools considerably. So, in the school year 1998-1999, the need for personnel was 3318 teachers. Only 1979 from the young specialists were distributed to the schools, from them only 671 or 34% came at their place of distribution.

Motivations for not coming are low wages and delays in payments, the lack of assurance with dwelling place, absence of provision with subsidies foreseen by the Government.

2500 of teachers left their service during the year 1998.

An present, 4756 teachers work with didactical charge of 1.5 and higher. A part of vacant places are covered with 3125 pensioners.

The interest of the young people for teacher’s profession has fallen during the last years.

The rapid changes of the events in political, economical and social aspects after 1990, didn’t cause creation, in a special regime, of a body, responsible for provision with EFA. To this context is referred also the fact that until 1990 the problem regarding provision with basic compulsory education for the most of school population didn’t exist. The essence of the problem is yield of the society, in condition of transition to the market economy, of some already obtained results, without managing to replace the old structures, less efficient, steadily being liquidated, with new ones, which would correspond to the new demands.

If we mention the strategy of educational system reforming in general and, in special, what is linked to EFA provision, the objectives, offered for implementation, were not from the area of impossible, but, unfortunately, not always actual conditions and society development direction were taken into account. For example, National Program of Educational Development for 1995-2005, developed in 1993-1994, was approbated by the Government only in 1999, without specification of expenditures, necessary for implementation of measures, envisaged in it. A good share from the provisions of the Law on Education (approbated in 1995) don’t function or were abrogated, and the offered amendments are not accepted by respective bodies.

One of the components of the education, which is very badly implemented in the aspect of authentic reform, is financing. In ratio to GDP, for educational system considerable resources were allocated, but they were used with a very low efficiency. Not always those resources were brought into priority educational zones – basic compulsory education.

In frame of EFA 2000 evaluation activities, a set of objective and subjective problems were stated, solving of which demands concrete actions in the future. An insufficient institutional level of the bodies implied in evaluation is a part of these problems, especially when taking into account the fact that statistical indicators (and not only) from our system of education are not comparable and compatible with European ones. Lack of a system for gathering, processing and depositing statistical data and current information was and continues to be one of the main obstacles in objective evaluation of the education.

Territorial-administrative reform, which is being implemented now, broke one of the chains of the educational management (though old, but functioning), without managing to found and involve in the activity of some new structures. Clear decentralisation of the competencies for basic compulsory education till the level of regional and local bodies of the public administration hasn’t been made until the present moment.

Organising some activities for training people is necessary to be performed as on the ministries level, as on the level of regional educational directions, as well as in educational institutions.

In order to provide with a permanent and objective evaluation of EFA it is necessary to create on the national level a Co-ordinating Council, as well as a work group, which would implement, together with local bodies, evaluation in territories, would accumulate necessary information and would develop the document itself. For all these, the work group will be provided with room and necessary equipment.

One of the future problems is sensibilisation of all society upon educational problems in general and, especially, basic compulsory education. To implement this, a set of activities for mediatisation of the problems, the fact which will demand implication of all mass-media services and utmost use of actual possibilities of the educational system – didactical personnel, pupils, pedagogical press, informational network of the educational system etc.

Achievement of the EFA objectives depends on the parameters which would be achieved in the aspect of equality and equal chances for access, quality of education, organisation of a democratic education, open and flexible, where everyone can develop to the top his personal abilities. Education is good if subsidiaries and educational levels, offered in its frame in the most varied way, are able to cover all children’s options in order to provide with a success for everybody.

Creation of a participative educational system. attraction of extra-budget financing sources, increase of local communities responsibility are just some of the possible solutions for provision with a social equity. It is very important that the state would determine priority educational zones and would use the budget for liquidating cultural, economical differences, which are increasing now, between urban and rural population.

On the level of those three basic components (social consciousness, political will, national possibilities) our society must undertake big efforts, as it seems, for a longer period of time in order to achieve, at least, the level of 90s in provision with compulsory education. Today some economical problems, determining directly the existence and development of our society, entered in such deep crisis, that their solution eclipses problems from social sector in general, and educational in particular. So much as economy is not functioning in normal, when in the labour market there’s enough labour force of a rather high quality, this will not demand from the educational system efforts, but will support it in training and education of a new generation of qualified personnel.

Taking into account increase of the importance and necessity of basic education, at the moment social consciousness is in positive quantity change and more and more people manifest their concern and interest for this level of training. A steady change of parents mentality regarding the level and quality of their children’s training is stated. With all their might, even from their often low income, try to cover more expenditures in order to offer the highest possible level and quality of their children education.

In a very difficult economical situation, which is in permanent decline, the Government makes considerable efforts to provide with achieving of the EFA objectives. In this context some forecasts of the Law on Education are mentioned (regarding maximum number of the children in classes, allocations for education as regards GDP, minimal wages of the didactical personnel etc.), as well as a set of normative and legislative acts adopted later, from which we mention State Program for Development of Educational Development. Unfortunately, political and economical instability didn’t allow creating some efficient mechanisms which would provide with implementation of the forecasts of the Law on Education.

In comparison to some remarkable successes, obtained by educational system in some areas, there is a large number of problems of major dimensions, demanding urgent solving: creation of a multi-channel system for financing the education, professionalisation of the educational management, review of the concept of initial didactical personnel training, institutionalising an efficient evaluation system.

There exist real possibilities to redress the situation at the moment. In order to do this, it is necessary to review actual system of distribution of the money produced in society. Stabling an efficient mechanism for collecting taxes, granting subventions exactly to those who really reed them and not to those who "merit" them, would ease to some extent existing situation.

1. Transition of Republic of Moldova to the market economy has a negative influence on the social sphere, including the education.
2. Republic economy is in decline after 1990, but the population is becoming poorer.
3. Poorness is amplified by the system of repartition of society income, which doesn’t contribute to provision with social equity.
4. Disbalance between urban and rural population in cultural, economical aspect is in permanent increase.
5. These factors impede implementation of the basic educational objective – provision with equal chances for education for all population categories.
6. Though transition to the market generated appearance of the first private educational structures (which doesn’t always mean extra-budget financing, but especially parents contributions), basic compulsory education remains mostly on the state responsibility, with its poor budget.
7. State declarations regarding priority educational zones (including basic compulsory education) until now don’t have a practical implementation, from the point of view of distribution of budget financing.
8. Though the first tries to support educational system begin to appear at present, these extra-budget sources are not rationally managed, more than this, an efficient mechanism for their attraction is lacking.
9. Social protection of children from vulnerable families remains one of the most urgent problems of the actual society.
10. For solving a set of actual educational problems, there are no mechanisms which would provide with a more participative society.
11. One of the mechanisms of provision with school attendance has worsened seriously, and it will require considerable resources for starting functioning again: school transport, living places, school alimentation, school medicine.
12. School management needs a professionalisation and permanent perfection in order to distribute human and material resources in the view of solving problems in priority educational zones.
13. In the field of curriculum, textbooks, evaluation significant quality results are obtained. In the same time, the structure of basic compulsory education is very low differentiated in order to respond to diverse educational demands of the school population.
14. Comprehension of all the society members of basic compulsory education necessity and importance remains a demand of our society.

Priority Areas and Problems of the Education which need urgent solving