Moldova General Education Project

"Students are now taught to think freely and to make decisions independently." Ludmila Stepan, Director of the Project Implementation Agency.

"Education in Moldova has changed radically in recent years. Students are no longer seen as children who must be taken care of, but as thinking young people who can take independent decisions,” says Valentina Popeli, a teacher from Cuhurestii de Jos village. 

The creation of the national school system and the adjustment of school curricula and textbooks began with the change in the country's political and economic system and the creation of the new state. Key reforms were needed – to work out new curricula, publish new text books and train teachers. This required huge funds that the state did not have. Schools were not provided with books, and pupils had to make do with old Soviet books or those received as humanitarian assistance from Romania and Russia.

To solve these problems, in 1997 the Moldovan Government requested the World Bank for assistance. In 1998, the World Bank offered a credit of $16.8 million for the General Education Project to reform Moldova's education system over a period of five years. The Government of Moldova's contribution to the project was US$3.16 million. The project was later extended for another year.

The first step in the process of reform was to work out curricula for general education which would be in line with European standards. For the first time in Moldova a curriculum for the native language of minorities was developed. The second stage of the project involved the publishing of new textbooks in line with the new curricula.

The publishing contracts for these textbooks were awarded through a process of international bidding. Six Moldovan publishing houses, among others, were awarded contracts.Thus, the project has also contributed to the development of the Moldovan textbook publishing industry. Over one hundred basic textbooks have been printed so far. 

To enable students to use them at an affordable cost, the textbooks are rented out to pupils. The money thus gathered is used to publish new textbooks. In this way, new textbooks will continue to be published, even after the World Bank project ends.

Alongwith the new curricula and textbooks, training teachers in the new curricula and in accordance with the latest teaching methods was a priority. The challenge for teachers now was to teach the new material in an innovative way, by changing from their old methods of merely imparting information, to training students to think for themselves.

The large number of teachers in need of training led to the decentralization of teacher-training from the national to the district level. Seven national teacher-training centres have been set up as part of the project, as well as 52 local training centres. These centers have trained over 10,000 primary school teachers and three times that many secondary school teachers.  

Another part of the project deals with the creation of a modern system to assess students' learning in general compulsory subjects, in accordance with the objectives of the new curricula.

Ludmila Stepan, the director of the project implementation agency, said the project has contributed to changing teachers' attitude towards the teaching process. "Students are now taught to think freely and take decisions independently. They are not only expected to learn facts and formulas, but also to engage in the thinking process, to argue their points of view, and to develop their individual personalities,” Stepan says.

The project has also been cost-effective - a sum of $ 1.9 million has been saved during its implementation. The amount will be used to buy books for school libraries.Said Ludmila Stepan, "Schools do not have enough books. The shelves of school libraries are almost empty and the books that exist meet only 20 percent of our needs. Of this small number, some 15 percent are written in the Cyrillic alphabet. We have therefore decided to use the saved funds to publish more books for our school libraries.” 

In keeping with the new approach to education, schools have independently chosen the books that they need. Each school was given 8,000 lei for books, with the remaining funds being distributed among schools depending on the number of pupils. The new books are expected to reach the shelves of libraries in the beginning of the new school year, continuing to support students and teachers alike as Moldova moves forward one page at a time.