The Ministry of Education cannot forbid or tell local communities, parents and students, school administrations how to organize their festivities at the beginning of the school year. This is Minister Monica Babuc’s answer to a request from an initiative group that wants religious services banned from the public schools, IPN reports.

“The Ministry of Education looks at this initiative with respect, because it represents the opinion of a part of Moldovan citizens and it also fits in with constitutional provisions that separates the state from the church and stipulates that education is secular. But these things are mostly decided by the local communities, the parents and the teachers together”, explained Babuc. The Ministry cannot intervene to ban priests from festivities, given that religion is taught as an optional class in 365 schools at the request of parents and 20,000 students attend these classes.

On August 4, an initiative group petitioned the Ministry of Education, Culture and Research to enforce the legal provisions on the secularity of education and to ban religious services during school festivities. Gender expert and human rights activist Polina Ceastuhina told a press conference at IPN that the Ministry should issue an order reaffirming the secularity and impartiality of public schools and this order should be sent to all the schools. According to the activist, religious services during school festivities don’t only violate the principle of secularity in education, but also the inclusive education provisions of the Education Development Strategy for 2011-2020.