Schools and kindergartens under same roof

Because of lower birth rates, an increasing number of local administrations in Moldovan villages resort to the solution of merging grammar schools with kindergartens and placing them under the same roof and principalship. The number of such schools-kindergartens is not available yet. Deputy Education Minister Tatiana Poting has told Info-Prim Neo that this method aims to optimize costs while keeping adequate conditions for education. Mayor Nicolae Moroz of Sipoteni, a village in Hincesti district, said that due to a low number of pupils the local school was closed down as part of the reform initiated by the Ministry of Education. Grades 5 to 9 are now accommodated by the lyceum in the neighboring village of Bobeica, and the building which used to house the local school now became a combined school-kindergarten. Until now, kindergarteners were using a provisional building. “It is good that the local school was optimized. Now the small children have proper conditions, too. It's not the school but the children we had in mind when the reform was conceived in our village. It was done to provide adequate conditions for education to them”, said the Mayor. The village and the district authorities offered 600,000 for repairs and now the kindergarten will be attended by 36 children. Raisa Diaconu, the principal of a school-kindergarten in Bratuleni village, Nisporeni, also said that fifth to ninth graders are going to a different school now to make room for the younger. “Until now, only children aged 5 and 6 were attending pre-school, and the younger ones were staying at home because the old village kindergarten had fell into deterioration. We have to move on and reorganize, because birth rates are constantly dropping”. The first school-kindergartens appeared with the start of the Ministry of Education's reform in 2010.