text: Cseres Karina Nicoleta

illustration: Radoaica Cristina                                                       

From a young age, we are told "you have free school, use it" and, of course, the proverb deeply rooted in Romanian culture: "you don't have a book, you don't belong", but the right to free education is really the key to all the problems of the Romanian system?

At the end of last year, in every news journal you could read about the colossally inferior and dire situation of education after the GDP split. (Why the Ministry of Education receives the lowest percentage of GDP in the last 10 years.).  

What is GDP? Gross domestic product, (abbreviated GDP,) is a macroeconomic indicator that reflects the sum of the market value of all goods and services intended for final consumption, produced in all branches of the economy within a country within a year. Practically, from the entire country's budget, the most important branch, namely education, was left last, allocating only 2.1% of GDP, i.e. 32.5 billion lei. Although the amount is higher compared to the one allocated in 2022, the percentage of GDP is the lowest since 2011, when the current education law was adopted which provides for the granting of 6% for Education. Article 8 of the law has always received derogation.

The latest statistics made on all the countries in Europe and their percentage of GDP allocated to education show us again in a bad place.

Where does the government actually invest this money?

I scoured the internet and archives far and wide for an attestation of the education investment plan and found nothing. I found no toilet paper in many high schools, no liquid soap, no heat, no textbooks dated after 2011. We live in an era of globalization and the human need to raise the standards in which we live, in which we learn, to standards in which future generations will have freedom, equality, culture. If we aim at the nuanced issue of the school subjects present in Romania, we will hit our heads with what we also heard from our parents "it's general culture, mother, this is the curriculum, this is what you do", being supported by an art of subjugation. 

What can we do? Petitions, protests, responses to their actions, but we are waiting for you in the comments to answer the question What can we do?