In the late 1990s, students living in Romania’s countryside were eight times more likely to score "unsatisfactory" on the compulsory science examination than their peers in urban areas. Even though nearly half of the school age population lives in rural areas, they made up only 24 percent of the students in upper secondary education. The dropout rate was about 1.5 times higher in rural schools than in urban ones. More than 25 percent of people in rural areas had only completed primary school or had no formal education, while in urban areas only 2.6 percent had similar education levels.
In 2003, the Romania Rural Education Project started supporting improved access to quality education for rural students by improving teaching conditions and professional development for teachers, promoting school-based innovation programs, strengthening linkages between schools and communities, and enhancing the capacity of central and local authorities to monitor results, disseminate information and formulate strategies and policies to improve learning. The project played an important catalytic role in scaling up some programs to be replicated in Romania with assistance from the EU. Further, it has raised international interest as a good practice in solving some of the challenging issues around education quality.
RSS