The EFA 2000 Assessment: Country Reports
Romania

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With this testing, the scores in the mother tongue were superior to those in mathematics (7.12 in the mother tongue; 6.76 in maths). In maths, a strong distinction among the pupils occurred, as a category of pupils with serious difficulties in this discipline came to surface. This category, the last quarter of pupils, with an average score of 3.10 is way behind the next quarter with the average score of 6.18; the average score of the first quarter was very high: 9.50. The maths test divided the school population into very good pupils and very poor pupils who fail to perform even at the lower limit of basic knowledge. In the mother tongue test, the average score of the last quarter was higher (4.42) than in maths; the first quarter average score was 9.06.

In general, a higher performance was found with items requiring automatism, mechanical learning and well-fixed construction schemes. The performance was poorer with items requiring conceptualisation, abstract thinking, and reasoning.

The first national capacity examination was organised during the 1998/99 school year by the National Service for Evaluation and Examination recently established.

The pass rate at this exam is high enough: 77.62 percent (76.22 percent, if the 1,904 pupils from preceding series are taken into account).

High differences, though, are found if the examinees’ residence place is considered: the pass rate is 82.73 percent in urban areas as against 67.54 percent in rural environment.

Despite the desire for the capacity examination to act as a "filter" with respect to high school access, very many high schools, especially theoretical ones, with more candidates than available number of seats, organised their own admission tests.

Between 1991 and 1995, Romania took part in TIMSS (The Third International Mathematics and Sciences Study), the most ambitious international research study in mathematics and sciences undertaken by IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement). TIMSS involved over half a million pupils, 30,000 maths and science teachers from 50 systems of education.

The population tested on a national sample were the pupils in adjacent classes with the highest rate of 13-year olds at the test date. In Romania, this corresponded to the 7^th and 8^th graders (3,899 pupils in the 8^th grade and 3,938 pupils in the 7^th grade).

In Romania, the study was carried out by a research team with the Institute for the Sciences of Education with the observance of the IEA methodology.

In maths, Romania was the 34^th on the list for the 8^th grade, and the 30^th, for the 7^th grade, respectively. In sciences, Romania was the 31^st on the list for the 8^th grade, and the 30^th, for the 7^th grade, respectively, out of the 41 countries having completed the research for the 8^th grade, and 39 countries for the 7^th grade.

The study disproved the myth according to which, in Romania, despite poor condition, the school system is better than that in the United States or Western Europe.

However, Romania achieved classification in sciences without significant statistic differences, in a group of 11 countries (France, Greece, Island, Estonia, Portugal, Denmark, Lithuania, Fr. Belgium, and Iran) and in maths, in a group of 9 countries (U.S.A., Scotland, Estonia, Spain, Island, Greece, Lithuania, and Cyprus).

Romanian pupils scored under the international average score, although at the end of the school year when testing had been done, the pass rates in the 8^th grade were 98.8 percent in urban areas and 97 percent in rural areas.

Also, although the percent of pupils who completed the concerned school year with and average score between 9 and 10 amounted to only 17.2 percent, only 3.1 percent of them scored among the 10 percent of the international sample.

The most significant occurrence with this age cohort is the diminishing of the population included in high school education. The number of high school pupils was slightly higher than half the number in 1989, and a very small percent (6 percent) of those having given up high school studies can be found in vocational education.

In rural areas, the situation of the high school education is dramatic. For example, out of the total number of pupils enrolled in high school, day courses, at the beginning of the 1996/97 school year, only 6.4 percent were in rural areas (out of the 1,295 rural high schools, in 1996, 185 were located in rural areas, nearly all with an agricultural profile). The number of pupils enrolled in rural vocational schools is about ten times smaller than in urban areas.

The study undertaken by the Institute for Sciences of Education, in 1994, on a national sample team including 12^th grade pupils, established the correlation between the psycho-intellectual potential (established through the Raven test) and the level of intellectual aspiration: 88 percent of the high and average school performance pupils expressed the intent to attend higher education institutions. The responses to item "Confidence in the future success in profession and, generally, in life", were highly dispersed by the three groups of school achievement considered. Paradoxically, the highest confidence in the future (43 percent) was expressed by average achievers; 37 percent of the highest school achievers believe in success, and 20 percent of the low achievers are also confident in their future.

The study showed that only 9 percent of the 12^th graders were rhythmically and constantly preparing in all disciplines. The percentage declines with the study years from 36.55 in the 6^th grade, to 30.4 percent in the 8^th grade, and to 20 percent in the 9^th grade.

A possible cause may be the overloaded curricula and teaching programmes, as mentioned by pupils and teachers alike, which renders impossible a constant interest in all study subjects. The pupils operate their own selection: 6 percent of the high achiever group state that they are not equally interested in all disciplines, 38 percent state having had a constant rhythm. As expected, as the admission exam to higher education is getting closer, in the terminal high school grade, there are very few pupils who study constantly for all subjects.

From among the 12^th graders in urban areas, 62 percent wish to continue their studies and get a university diploma. The rate for the rural area is of only 26 percent. In the 12^th grade, 32 percent and 58 percent of the pupils in rural and, respectively, urban areas, take recourse at private tutoring in one, two, or three subjects.

After 1989, tutoring tend to expand and focus on the preparation for admission in the selective cycles of education.

Since tutoring or "parallel school" is financed by parents, the phenomenon has a double negative effect: the inefficiency of the formal classes (treated superficially) and the unjustified heightening of the selection standards in the face of the demand for performance by extra-school "doping". Moreover, not all parents have the material means required, which represents an important source of social inequity.

Private tutoring, overloaded programmes, and selection by failure are thus the most important threat in point of quality of formal education.

The 1995 study at the close of the primary cycle posed an important issue: the discrepancy between the scores in urban and rural areas. In urban environment, language performances were significantly higher (urban test average score was 6.52 as against the rural 5.24, the distance increasing in maths (7.17 urban, 5.82 rural).

The 1994 study, in its turn, also found that in large families, particularly in rural areas, (32 percent of the tested children and residing in rural areas came from three- or more children families, while the corresponding rate in urban areas was only 9 percent) the scores were very much below the average.

In rural areas, parents are less educated (43 percent completed only gymnasium studies), they have an inferior professional status and/or lack the conditions or the interest in the instruction of their children.

Under the circumstances, to achieve equality of chances in basic education, two determinant conditions need to be considered: in rural environments, with low parent schooling, lack of income, and tendency toward the early use of child work, the chances for the children for instruction are drastically reduced; in urban environment, families of low-schooling employees, liable to unemployment, tend to reduce their children’s level of education and the ensuing expenses.

The data of the 1994 study indicate that children whose parents are university graduates have higher school and test scores (about 54 percent, function of father’s level of instruction, and 57 percent, function of mother’s level of instruction). Only 6-7 percent, related to both parents’ level of instruction, has poor achievements.

At the international study, TIMSS, both in maths and in sciences, the pupils who had at least one higher educated parent scored above the international average, while those whose at least one parent was high-school educated scored above the average score of the Romanian pupils in the sample.

A direct relation may be made between parents’ level of instruction and test scores in maths and physics of their children. The table below presents the relation function of the instruction level of at least one parent.

As shown by prior studies, pupils’ achievements depend on their parents’ level of instruction.

Both in maths and in sciences, pupils whose at least one parent was a university graduate scored above the international mean, and those whose at least one parent had completed high school, scored over the mean of the Romanian sampled pupils both in math and in science.

The studies undertaken in the primary cycle revealed that the teaching experience of the instructor and continuity in class have a favourable influence over pupils’ achievement by about one point.

The scores of pupils instructed by qualified teaching staff were expected to differ from those of pupils instructed by unqualified teaching staff. But the gap shown by the 1995 study on primary cycle graduates showed a very large gap: the average score at the mother tongue test given to pupils instructed by unqualified teaching staff was 4.80 as against the national average score of 6.04; only 1.02 percent of the pupils scored over 9; in maths, the average score was 5.41, as against 6.63, the national average score.

In 1998, at the SNEE test given to primary cycle graduates, the scores differed in urban areas (average score was 72.42 percent of the maximum score) from those in rural areas (the average score was 59.91 percent, respectively, 52.26 percent in classes with simultaneous teaching).

In the TIMSS study, pupils’ scores proved to be depended on the teaching experience of their instructions: higher function of years of activity, in terms of junior and senior teachers with a maximum of 11-20 years of teaching experience; decreasing for those with over 20 years of activity.

Teachers’ questionnaire responses for this study show that they appreciate pupils’ creativity in maths and sciences. However, 80 percent of the teachers spend most of their time in class by helping pupils found in difficulty.

Another factor influencing achievement is programme overloading. The same is true for large homework loads assigned to pupils.

Thus, out of the total 41 participating countries in the TIMSS study, the Romanian pupils take the second place with respect to the time spent by doing homework after class (an average of 5 hours per day, as against 1.4 hours a day spent by Danish pupils, who obtained similar scores).

The pass rates in compulsory education are at small variance between girls and boys, with a slight advantage for girls.

In the study mentioned, sex particularities were no sampling criteria, but there has been found out that the structure of the population investigated is very close to the sex structure of the school population, and the scores were close (even equal in 8^th grade maths).

Despite the fact that girl pass rate was higher than boy’s, the 1994 study of the Institute for Sciences of Education on functional illiteracy showed that 11 percent of the total functional illiterates identified among graduates of compulsory education were girls, while boys represented only 8.9 percent. This is a risk population, especially because the probability for this category to continue formal education is low, chiefly in rural environments, while the chances for access to non-formal education are higher for the male population (for example, the courses organised by the Ministry of National Defence during the military service).

Tutoring, anther phenomenon mentioned in the study, was evidenced to influence learning by the rest of the studies mentioned. The TIMSS study shows that Romanian pupil in the 8^th grade had an average of 2 hours’ tutoring in maths per week. When the number of classes and that of hours spent on doing homework, we get the picture of the overstressed pupils, particularly those in terminal years.

The 1994 study on the poor school achievement showed that the biological factors having influenced school achievement were the subjects’ health status and the number of children in a family. It has also been established that the subjects coming from large families (three or more children) and were among the smallest in the family – 27 percent in the 6^th grade and 30 percent in the 7^th grade – ranged in the zone of lower intelligence, even in that of the lower limit intellect, in some cases.

Family characteristics also influence achievement. The study revealed a large percentage of pupils (14 percent) from disorganised or reorganised families with poor or very poor school achievement. As a matter of fact, the TIMMS study showed that, from among the former communist participating countries, Romania had the highest percentage (33 percent) of children that lived with only one parent (on test date, 7 percent lived without any parent).

School achievement also reflects pupils’ living conditions at home. Returning to the comparative data from the former communist countries supplied by the TIMSS study, against an average of 4-5 persons living together with the subjects, Romania is the last on the list, in terms of rural areas, where the pupils’ residence is occupied by 5.18 persons.

In terms of home endowment (books, dictionaries, study desk), Romanian pupils were among the last on the list, when compared with their colleagues in Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Slovakia. In Slovenia and Hungary, 31 percent of the sampled pupils did not even have their own study desk.

The TIMSS study ranks Romania, with its 19 percent, among the last five positions (together with Thailand, Columbia, Iran, and Estonia) in point of pupils owning a computer at home. The first positions were taken by Scotland (90 percent), England (89 percent), and the Netherlands (85 percent).

Computer-provided schools are scarce, as compared to the countries mentioned above. Romania ranks last, with an average of one computer per school (11 in Hungary). The TIMSS study correlates the frequency of computer use during maths and science classes with the test scores. Pupils using the computer both in maths and sciences have better scores.

The cause is also the unfair distribution among schools of the few existing computers. There are seriously endowed schools and schools where both the teachers and the pupils involved in the TIMSS study, have responded that they had never had access to a computer.

In terms of motivation, the 1994 study focused on the interest in school and investigation was carries out along a set of variables, such as interest in school activity, continuity of learning, importance grated to instruction.,

30 percent of the sampled 6^th graders mentioned their interest in all programme discipline (probably out of a real or declared conformism to school norms and manifested by lower-aged pupils). The rate in the 8^th grade was only 6.5 percent, diminished by the priority granted to the disciplines requested at the admission exam in high school.

Confidence in school is related to the level of school and professional aspirations, more precisely confidence in its possibility to favour social and professional success. Out of the total subjects, irrespective of level of achievement, only 10 percent mentioned having difficulties in receiving information.

According to pupils, the difficulties in learning are also raised by some textbook deficiencies (overloaded with information, inaccessible language) and by teacher activity in class (too elaborated or unclear language, inadequate teaching methods, etc.).

A strong influence over school achievement is exerted by the level of school aspiration hold by the group of friends: the higher the level, the better the scores.

The study envisaged not only the factors influencing learning, but also the assessment of their influence, and their hierarchization.

Considering the pupils’ individual traits, it has been found out that, with all investigated samples, self-image ranked first or at lest, one of the variables reflecting it (self-evaluation of achievement, confidence/distrust in success with the future exams, profession, and life).

With the sampled 6^th graders, the second place is held by the importance paid to learning activities. With the 8^th graders, the attitude toward school as an institution, confidence/distrust in its capacity to ensure professional and social success, and the level of school aspirations are on the first place.

The research also considered the relationship between school achievement and the amount of time spent for instruction. It has been found out that school success depends not only on the level of intellectual development and other individual traits, variable of family and school environment, but also on the actual length of the study time.

Given that Romania has failed to implement the UNESCO/UNICEF project, Measuring Learning Achievement (MLA), the only comparative data available are supplied by IEANCEE, a study jointly financed by UNESCO and the Ministry of National of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.

For the first time in the history of comparative international studies in education, TIMSS also included 9 countries from Central and Eastern Europe. IEANCEE (International Evaluation of Achievement in Nine Central and Eastern European Countries) is the deriving project meant to perform a comparative analysis of the scores obtained by 8^th graders and of the social and economic conditions in which they studied.

The involved nine countries were Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary. During the second half of the Twentieth Century, these countries experienced historical events that differed greatly from those in the rest of the countries having participated in TIMSS. Also, given the imposition of the former USSR, their systems of education were similar. At testing time, despite the fact that reforms were being under way, the education systems in these countries still retained many similarities.

Prior to 1989, it was only Hungary (IEA member since 1968) and Slovenia that took part in international studies on education. Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, and Slovakia are IEA members since 1991, Estonia and Lithuania since 1993.

In all the nine countries, maths is a compulsory study subject in the 8^th grade. At testing time, sciences were studied as separate subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, geography, except for Russia where pupils have a choice between the separate or integrated study of sciences.

The schools in Romania and Russia included in the test had on the average the highest number of pupils: over 950, as compared to Hungary’s 460. The teacher/number of pupils ratio was the highest in Romania: 32.2 as compared to Estonia’s 11.3.

Romania registered at the date the lowest figure (3,2 percent) on absenteeism. School abandonment was highest in Hungary, Estonia, and Lithuania (over 11 percent) as against Romania’s 5.8.

Test scores ranked the Czech Republic the first, in maths and in sciences. Romania, Lithuania, and Estonia ranked among the lower echelon of the 41 competing countries.

The table below shows the test scores in maths and sciences registered by the participating countries in the IEANCEE study. It also indicates each of the 41 countries’ ranking with TIMSS.

We may also add that Romania, Estonia, and Lithuania have the smallest number of pupils who achieved very good scores, among the 10 value percentages: in maths, 17.9 percent of the Czech pupils ranked among the first 10 percent, as compared to only 3.1 percent of the Romanian pupils.

As a general remark, the pupils involved in the IEANCEE study gave good responses to "classical" or theoretical questions, but rather poor responses to those referring directly every day life. It means that their reaction was better in terms of solving problems with which they had been trained in school, and reacted poorly, in some cases very poorly, at practical problems.

Romania’s scores in sciences, as compared to Latvia’s and Estonia’s, were poor. Mention must be made that, in these two countries, physics is taught starting from the 7^th grade, while in Romania, the subject starts to be taught in the 6^th grade, that is, Romanian pupils have one year in addition for study.

The sampled Romanian pupils allocated more of their time to homework doing than their colleagues in the IEANCEE study: 1.70 hours for maths, and 1.45 hours for sciences, as compared with the Czech pupils who study maths for 0.62 hours and sciences, 0.63 hours per day, and who ranked in the first echelon. In the case of the Romanian pupils, the homework-assigned time is lengthened by private tutoring: maths 0.23 hours, sciences 0.08 hours per day.

Our pupils spent more time with maths and science study because of loaded programmes and of the exceptional pressure they felt being exerted by the high school admission exams, where maths is part of the test.

Regrettably, the study showed that the differences in knowledge and in conditions favouring learning are higher between rural and urban areas (to the disadvantage of the rural) in Romania, as compared with the rest of the countries included by the IEANCEE study. The pupils with favourable family backgrounds manifested a positive attitude toward the study of maths (on the whole, their performance was better than the average) and assigned more importance to hard work than to luck with a view to attaining proposed aims. The fact that pupils with poor backgrounds rely on luck to help them get results in the "exact sciences" raises the question about how school can change the influence of poor environment through intervention programmes.

No differences were found between girls’ and boys’ responses to the knowledge test, neither at the 7^th nor at the 8^th grade. Although expected, school or class size did not influence results. The study perceives, though, as extremely significant to Romania, more significant than to other countries in the IEANCEE study, the differences between rural and urban areas.

After decades of silence and obliviousness, the issue of illiteracy has resumed actuality. Prior to 1989, illiteracy was considered a solved issue. The ‘90s relaunched the interest for illiteracy. Three were the factors that pressured the issue:

liberalisation of information and access to situations proving that far from having been "eradicated" by the famous literacy campaigns, illiteracy remains an engaging issue;

initiation of research projects that have restored the interest for illiteracy and have supplied plausible data obtained by objective methods;

synchronisation with mobility programmes, with campaigns and projects initiated by international organisations (The Conference on Education for All, Jomtien 1990, The International Conference on Adult Education CONFINTEA V, Hamburg 1997, the UNESCO campaign for fight against illiteracy, etc.).

Under the circumstances, we may say that the ‘90s have revived official preoccupation for and public interest in adult literacy, in Romania. Despite the absence of a coherent policy in this field, important steps have been taken:

the phenomenon of illiteracy in Romania has been acknowledged by the public opinion and decision-makers in education;

a detailed interpretation and analysis of illiteracy through professional evaluations and studies; the data envisage various forms and levels of literacy (basic literacy, functional literacy, literacy in Romanian as a second language, child and adult literacy, etc.);

knowledge of foreign experience proving illiteracy is a universal phenomenon, present even in industrialised societies;

projects, programmes, and literacy courses have been organised;

decision-makers have been persuaded to contribute specific regulations on illiteracy and basic adult education.

The data concerning the degree of literacy of the Romanian population are collected from the following sources: population census, studies undertaken by the Institute for Sciences of Education, and statistics data supplied by the National Statistics Commission.

Population Census (1992) represents the first source to be considered after 1990. Prior to this date, as of 1950, illiteracy is absent from official statistics. According to the Census that also considered unschooled population (persons having declared that they never attended any formal school classes), the situation of basic illiteracy is as follows:

with the population aged 12 and over, the number of persons having never attended a school form and having declared it amounts to 788,000 individuals, that is, 4.2 percent of the total population;

the highest rate is held by female persons (75 percent of the total illiterate persons) and persons aged 65 and over (51.9 percent of the total illiterate persons);

with the population aged 34 and under, the highest rate of illiterate group is aged 15-19, representing 3 percent of the total illiterate population aged 12 and over.

The objective of a study undertaken by the Institute for Sciences of Education in 1994 was the assessment of the degree of functional illiteracy among graduates of the basic, compulsory education. The evaluation was performed by testing a sample of 1,590 subjects, graduates from the 8th grade during the 1993/94 school year (a representative sample group at the national level, with an error margin of +/- 3 percent).

The evaluation was performed according to Canadian methodology (applied by Statistics Canada in national questionnaires starting with 1990), the equipment having been validated and calibrated for the population of Romania, for the reading, writing, and counting abilities. The degree of illiteracy was ordered by levels, starting with level I (the lowest level, level of functional illiteracy), to level IV (high level of functionality). Level I includes functional illiterates, that is, persons who completed their compulsory education and can write, read, and calculate, but who cannot solve tasks related to the use of such abilities in real- life situations.

Taken by levels, the subjects were grouped as follows:

level I (functional illiterates) 10.3 percent

level II 12.8 percent

level III 35.7 percent

level IV 01.2 percent

Therefore, 41.3 percent of the subjects are literate after having completed basic education at a high level of functionality, while 10.3 percent of them failed to achieve the reading, writing, and counting abilities needed to solve every day tasks.

The latest information supplied by the analysis of the degree of literacy of the adult population is provided by the National Statistics Commission. Literacy is defined as "the percentage of persons aged 15 and over, who have attended school or who can read and write even if having failed to complete their basic education, out of the total population aged 15 and over" (S. indices 17 and 18 in Appendices).

Based on these criteria, the percentage of persons alphabetised during the period between 1994-1997 is as follows:

As seen from the table, women hold a higher percentage for the 1994-1996 period. For the year of 1997, no data differentiated by sex exist. The percentage of women considered illiterate as defined by the National Statistics Commission is on the decline, from 4.8 percent in 1994, to 4.6 percent in 1996. The percentage of illiterate males is 1.4 percent of the total population. Similarly, the percentage of illiterate persons to the total population is also on the decline, from 3.2 percent in 1994, to 3 percent in 1997.

The evaluation of illiteracy is far from being easy. On the one hand, the expenses of a relevant evaluation, at national level, according to all scientific criteria able to inspire confidence in the possibility to generalise the data and that would take into account that the manifestations of illiteracy, are very high. Proof stands the fact that there are very few countries in possession of detailed information acquired through national investigations.

On the other hand, the general framework – economic, political, and social – is highly important in decision making about the allocation of significant funds for such evaluation. Romania needed first a period to "acknowledge" the existence of illiteracy as a phenomenon and another period to declare literacy a priority. Given that education in general has suffered a process of reform, with priorities defined by stage and type of fields, there have been created favourable openings to the issue of literacy; during the last two years, though, available resources were directed toward launching courses and programmes, and not toward the assessment of the phenomenon.

Therefore, the information obtained through investigations undertaken by the Institute for Sciences of Education and presented in the following paragraphs retain their importance as professional information and studies that may serve as reference data and lines of reasoning to Romania’s literacy programmes.

In point, the Institute for Sciences of Education undertook the following with reference to the assessment of the degree of functional illiteracy:

1990-1992 – specific equipment, adequate for the population of Romania, were built and validated; the equipment includes every day tasks of reading, writing, and calculating; the equipment makes use of the Canadian methodology, considered as one of the most efficient in the world; the equipment is applied to the graduates of compulsory education.

1992-1993 – a pilot-investigation was conducted on the "risk" population, i.e., graduates of the industrial evening high schools, rural area population, conscripts, law offenders.

1992-1993 – an opinion investigation was conducted by 570 educators in primary and gymnasium education (institutors, teachers of Romanian and maths, speciality inspectors) on the need to set up courses on adult literacy and the possibility of teacher involvement in such courses.

1994 – a nation-wide inquiry was conducted on a representative sample about the reading, writing, and calculating abilities of compulsory education graduates.

1996 – an investigation was conducted among the disavantaged school population (graduates of compulsory education) in an area of Bucharest.