The Liberal Party (PL) expresses its opposition as to the initiative of the Education Ministry “to optimize” the school network in Moldova, a project providing for closing or amassing the schools attended by few children, Info-Prim Neo learns from a communique issued by this party. Earlier this month, the Education Ministry set for discussion a draft Strategy on optimizing the general school network in Moldova during the period 2008 – 2015. It provides for organizing constituency schools and for the reorganization of the schools by changing their status (school-kindergarten, primary school, gymnasium, lycee, vocational school etc.) The announced objective of the Strategy is to enhance the public spending. PL considers that, in case the Education Ministry starts to implement this plan, the medium-term consequences will be extremely severe, while in a perspective of at most 50 years, the villages could remain without schools, pupils and teachers. PL finds the Moldovan population goes on decreasing, as the Communist Government from Chisinau, instead of taking concrete measures to stimulate the birth rate growth, prefers to close the schools attended by fewer pupils. The party is quoting official statistics, according to which in 2008, compared with 2000, one observes the decrease of the weight of the age group of 0-14 years from 23.8% to 17.6%, what means the number of this category of people decreased with 238,000. PL considers this situation to be a consequence of the fact that since 2001 the process of mass emigration from Moldova has intensified, while the Communists Party, in power for almost 8 years, has made no effort to create jobs, has not carried out efficient social-economic reforms, has not attracted investments to develop the economy. PL warns that in case the Government starts to close the schools, a large group of people will confront with new difficulties in the education process. Many of them may give up their studies. At the same time , many teachers will lose their jobs, and this is going to make even worse “the desertification scourge” of the Moldovan villages. According to the draft Strategy on optimizing the school network developed by the Education Ministry, 332 schools are to be reorganized and 83 constituency schools are to be instituted enjoying better studying conditions. The estimative expenditures incurred will be some 28.62 million lei annually. The savings obtained after implementing the initiative could be used to raise the teachers’ salaries, to develop the outfit and didactic potential of schools, to stimulate performances in education, reads the draft Strategy. According to the Education Ministry, now the school network is made up from 1,571 entities attended by 491,500 pupils. Compared with the 2000-2001 scholar year, the school contingent decreased in urban areas from by 24%, while in rural areas– by 20%. The number of primary schools decreased with 19 units (16%), of gymnasiums– by 6 units (1%), of general schools – by 244 units (45%), of schools fro disabled – with 3 units (7%). The number of evening schools remained steady. The number of lycees has substantially grown – by 259 units (59%). According to official forecasts, in the 2014-2015 scholar year, the contingent of pupils will drop by 24% compared with 2006-2007, what will condition the diminution of all the indices of the efficiency of the public expenditures and the significant restriction of the allocations insuring the quality in education, reads the draft Strategy.