The coming into force of the new Education Code didn’t lead to the significant diminution of the phenomenon of informal payments in general education. On the contrary, the informal payments rose in volume and as frequency. Also, as a result of the coming into force of the Teacher’s Code of Ethics, the phenomenon passed to the gray area, each third respondent of a sociologic study refusing to answer the questions about the non-observance of this Code. Such conclusions were reached by the authors of a study of informal payments in schools that was conducted by the Institute for Public Policy in partnership with the Center for Sociological Investigations and Marketing „CBS-AXA”.
The study, which was presented in a news conference at IPN, shows the informal payments in general education institutions rose two times, from 541.5 million lei in 2015 to 1.130.9 billion in 2017. These payments in 2017 represented about 17% of the budget allocated to general education by the state. In 2015, the informal payments against the state allocations per students constituted 1/5, while in 2017 the figure rose to 1/3 or almost two times. “The Education Code and the Code of Ethics haven’t yet produced the expected result. The implemented administrative methods are inefficient. The approach to his problem should be changed and more work should be done with the parents,” noted expert in educational policies Anatol Gremalski, one of the authors of the study.
“I do not want the raise the issue of small schools as this is sensitive in the pre-electoral period, but those who are specialists in education understand very well it is hard to make sure that two foreign languages in a small school are taught by professional teachers, as the Education Code requires. With all love for small localities from which many of us came to Chisinau, we should admit that the schools were then generally concentrated in large localities where conditions were created for children from small localities to have access to studies,” stated Anatol Gremalski.
According to him, by the percentage of the GDP allocated to education, the Republic of Moldova takes one of the leading places in Europe, by a percentage of even 9%. But this money is used inefficiently and the families with large incomes have thus to look for solutions – either to pay for additional classes or to make presents to teachers so as to attract academic favors.
The research authors consider the phenomenon of informal payments can be significantly diminished by ensuring the proper implementation of the Teacher’s Code of Ethics and other documents and by changing the mentality of particular categories of parents.
The study “Academic ethics and integrity in general education. Informal payments in schools” was carried out with financial support from the Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundations through Soros Foundation Moldova. The study results are representative nationwide with a margin of sampling error of ±4% and are comparable with similar studies conducted in 2006 and 2012.
