We have in the recent past written at some length about what we think of Romania’s education system (or, rather, about the tiny part of it we have any experience of), and to save any of you from reading that long post again, our thoughts are basically this: we think we get a good deal.
Romania’s teachers on the other hand, certainly do not.
Here’s a little history…
Like Romania’s medical professionals, Romania’s teachers have long been criminally underpaid. While the teaching profession is not – in any country – a profession for those seeking their fortune, in few countries are teachers paid as poorly as they are in Romania.
In January 2008, the then Liberal government of Calin Popescu-Tariceanu passed Legea 221 which would have given Romania’s teachers a large increase in pay from the end of that year onwards. The lowest grade of teacher (an invatator, in his or her first year of full teaching) would have been guaranteed a monthly salary of 1291.60 lei, or about €300. Still a pittance, and still barely enough to make ends meet, but a healthy increase and a step in the right direction.
Alas, Tariceanu left office in December 2008. One of the first acts of the new government, led by current prime minister Little Emil Boc, was to amend Legea 221, slashing the pay increase from 50 per cent to just 17 per cent.
Incredibly, even this meager increase has not yet been paid to all of Romania’s teachers.
Some have received no increase in pay at all since 2008.
As a result, almost two-thirds of Romania’s teachers have taken their employers (in most cases local councils) to court, in order to have their full rights to a 50 per cent pay increase (as agreed between the teaching unions and Romania’s government of the time) reinstated.
Those who have won have indeed been paid the full 50 per cent increase. Now it looks as though they will be asked to repay this money.
Though the government said on Monday that all teachers would now receive the full 17 per cent increase, backdated to January 1st 2009, this still leaves the minimum teaching salary down at about 800 lei per month.
The teaching unions remain unhappy, and are now – finally – becoming increasingly militant. A long industrial dispute looks likely. The first strikes are set for next month, and though we – as parents with a child in school – would usually not take kindly to striking teachers, this time we can’t help but back them.
Standing up for what is rightfully, legally, yours – even daring to ask for more in a time of austerity – is to be applauded by anyone who believes in a world of plenty and who takes the controversial view that children should be taught by people who do not have to worry about paying the bills.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
17% rise in the crisis is generous, even too generous. If they privatised all the schools I think things might be better. The important thing is to improve curricula and then improve the quality of teachers by in the first place good training.
But to get good teachers into training you need to promise them a decent salary when they have qualified.
P.S.:
About 7 years ago I enrolled myself in the school of football referees, affiliated to the Romanian Football Federation.
)
And the teacher of my group was former referee Florin Chivulete, who was suspended from refereeing after he tried to bring some whores to a brigade of French (I think) referees before a game Ceahlaul Piatra Neamt – Austria Vienna in the Intertoto Cup.
And in the class we were shown some basic football phases on tv, from a CD compiled by the UEFA.
And at some point there was a phase from a game Italy vs. God know what team from the 1998 World Cup, where Maldini brought down the opposing striker from behind, with a 2-legged tackle.
And then Chivulete paused the recording and told us “Here, if you don’t show a red card, se cheama ca n-ai sange in sula!”
There, now you know the history of the expression
Wonderful. I intend to use the phrase at every opportunity.
I am one with strong feelings about how this decrepit education system is damaging the future of this country.
However we need to keep things in context:
1. The Government in this country is not yet a real institution. This is to say a decision made today by one party in charge, is not made in the long term benefit of the taxpayer. Instead decisions are made to maximize the voters goodwill towards the party in charge until the first election and to delay all the negative effects of rash decision until someone else comes in to foot the bill. This has been spiraling quite consistently since 1989 (with some acceleration during PSD times)
2. Many would argue that professors, have it much better than medical residents, because they have time and opportunities for round up revenues with private tutoring, something medical residents can only dream of
3. The current problems with education are far deeper reaching than underpaid professors. For the past 20 years we were unable to rally sufficient political will to produce realistic, practical goals and strategies to achieve those goals for the country education (primary through PHD) to follow. There are solid systemic problems that many of the civil servants involved with the education system understand and know how to fix. But because of the continuous political bickering, and -most notably- because of the crass (yet varying) degrees of incompetence of the education ministers and state secretaries resulted in zero coherent and integrated progress made towards an holistic approach to fixing education. It was always one or two loudest squeaky doors that got the grease (but no one fixed the actual tilting crumbling house causing the squeaks).
5. These salary protests aside, be critical of the news about this minister of education: cutting through the tabloid headlines, listening to him speak about his vision, education, its future and the education law is refreshing relative to the discourse of the past decade.
6. Yes, better paid professors is on of the keys to improve education. But it’s narrow sighted to cite it as a priority. The education system is rotten on oh-so-many levels, and throwing some money at it before giving it a shake-up will achieve more of the same things we’ve seen over the past 20 years.
Sorry for the length. What I am trying to say is that I don’t think anyone denies professors should be better paid. However, in order to improve the education system and afford better payment for the professors there’s a severe need to start reforming, making things more efficient and restructuring. Otherwise money will be tossed into a black hole just we feel good about things. Romania is only now starting to take the tough decisions and actions it should’ve about 15 years ago. I certainly hope this government won’t puss out the same way they all did before, for the sake of social tranquility.
While it is true that much about the education system needs to be reformed, especially at post-primary level – closing all the private, ‘buy-a-degree’ universities would be a start – the fact remains that teachers deserve better salaries. Yes, many teachers are too long in post and no longer up to the task. And they need to be weeded out. But that is a long process, one that should be done only after you raise salaries, else the good teachers (the majority) will be penalised, and good young graduates will continue to be discouraged from becoming teachers.
As for the argument that teachers can easily take private pupils to make ends meet, it misses the point: they shouldn’t have to.
Unfortunately, the current Romanian government has little interest in education. Quite where you get the idea that ‘Romania is only now starting to take the tough decisions and actions it should’ve about 15 years ago’ is beyond me.
What tough decisions?
Spending money that could have gone to education on second hand warplanes?
Romania does not need warplanes. A tough and brave decision would have been to tell the Americans to ‘stuff it’ and invest the money in education.
Alas, Romania’s all powerful president wants to play soldiers.
Just so we’re clear, I believe in the normal country we will become you’d be 100% correct.
However, I’m afraid you are trivializing and over-simplifying the situation the Romanian education finds itself in right now. You have formed an opinion and you are quite resolute in not changing it.
My point was merely that you should try to cut through the mass-media noise and see the broader picture: the salaries (regardless of how morally and legally entitled teachers are to better pay) are a relatively insignificant problem, a distraction from what the actual issues are, and what this law is about. Yes, the government communicates poorly, but that is no excuse for uninformed and uncritical opinions.
Only marginally related to our discussion, but on this same topic, here is what I consider a strong response to a similar distraction to this one over pay: “reducing the autonomy of the state uni’s”
http://www.campusnews.ro/stiri-opinii-7077160-resping-rectorii-proiectul-legii-educatiei-nationale.htm#
Elena Ceausescu said the same thing at her trial, a few hours before she was shot.
The problem is that teachers don’t have blood in their installation (“n-au sange in sula”). You make strike today or tomorrow, not over 6 months.
Whan you say you go on strike it means that tomorrow you put the lock on the door and come back only when you got what you wanted.
Miron Cozma was a real union leader, today’s union leaders are crap nobody cares about them anymore, not even the union members.
I bet you a beer that over a month or when they go on strike Emil Boc won’t give 2 lei to the teachers fiindca n-au sange in sula.
up-voted for the artistic use of n-au sange in sula and the gratuitous use of Elena Ceausescu’s name.
Agreed. Any post that contains “n-au sange in sula” is a good one, regardless of the accuracy or quality of the rest of its content
=))
It may well be that it was Elena who said it then… I know one of them did. Not sure I agree about Cozma… more a terrorist than union leader. Besides, like Scargill in England he actually led the miners to defeat (although Scargill was not helped by the fact that the Britsh labour movement betrayed the miners en bloc): the Jiu Valley has how many mines now? And all that investment which was promised in exchange for closing the mines… What happened to that?
Unfortunately the miners don’t exist as a force anymore. And the Jiu Valley is more or less underdeveloped as it was 12 years ago.
But the legend of Miron Cozma remains, that’s how a real union leader should be. When I look at tv and see the leaders of the teachers sindicates it becomes very hard to not die of laughter.
When Emil Boc cuts their salaries with 2 sentences, when Basescu says that 10% of them will be fired by the end of the year, the union leaders announce that “the teachers won’t write marks in the catalogues anymore”.
Really, it’s laughable, they look like monkeys. Who knows, maybe their next move will be to offer Emil Boc an unannounced test-paper and mark him with 3 in the catalogue…
If I were a union leader, in 2 days all schools would have shut the gates and 50.000 people would have been on street, forcing the entrance into the Victoria Palace.
Yes I had heard that (forgot to to mention it though). I think Nicolae Ceausescu also said something like ‘I have not heard of anyone dying of starvation in Romania’ during his famous Newsweek interview in the summer of 1989.
did you known that Funeriu, education minister, said last week that he did not want to hear any more about the low wages for teachers salaries because he has never heard of a teacher dying of starvation?
i know i’m being anal about fair context:
in rural areas the monthly salary is quite decent to make a living, and in urban areas many of the professors who are cash strapped have (and take!!) the opportunity to tutor students privately and get some extra moneys. (they have the time, the knowledge, and access to the customers)
This is equivalent of pulling double shifts. People need to suck it up and stop whining. Romania is not France. We don’t have 20 small countries to suck the blood out and thus have the government pay us to be lazy. We need to pull our asses up get to work and stop relying on the government to fix all our problems.
Stop whining?
As in, accept their fate and be done with it?
How mioritic of you.
well, I think is much more mioritic to always find something wrong with any course of action so that in the and everything stays the same.
but…
While I agree with Radu that the people in the educational system are very apt in finding ways to supplement their budget (much as the people in the medical system) I’m appalled by the fact that the state institutions instead of fighting against these practices take them as an “known and viable additional source of income” when deciding state policy (because this is how I interpret Funeriu’s statement). Relaying on corruption and black market to pay for your employees is a sign of a dying (or a very sick) organization. How can you enforce then rules against bribes and conflict of interests for these people??
I would very much prefer for their salaries (teachers,doctors) to be increased/doubled/tripled – based on increased taxes. We pay unofficial taxes anyway, but at least we would have the moral right to request from them performance and probity.