Tiraspol angry with Chisinau over education remarks

After last week's international conference in Germany, Maria Paschenko, the co-chair of the working group on education on behalf of Transnistria, stated at a press conference in Tiraspol that the Moldovan authorities attempted to call into question the quality of education in the unrecognized republic. However, her counterpart in Chisinau, Deputy Education Minister Loretta Handrabura, told Info-Prim Neo that the message formulated during the meeting in Germany was in fact “very positive and constructive”. “When we met with our Moldovan colleagues in Germany, it was confusing to hear objections from them as to the quality of education in Transnistria. Everybody knows that the Transnistrian Republic has adopted Russian education standards, and nobody calls those into question. Relevant Russian authorities supervise how education standards are observed in Transnistria. This is confirmed by documents and protocols, and no complaints have been registered to date. And there is no way Chisinau couldn't have known this. Thus, the statements of Moldovan representatives can be interpreted as biased and as an attempt to paint Transnistria in a bad light. Our education program is 30 percent better than the Moldovan one. Our education system took up what was best from both the Soviet and modern Russian education systems”, said Maria Paschenko. According to her, another issue discussed at the conference was the recognition by the Moldovan authorities of the diplomas issued by the unrecognized republic's University, but no consensus was reached on that either. For her part, Loretta Handrabura says that the Moldovan delegation at the conference never touched the topic of education quality in the Transnistrian region. “This is a regrettable thing to hear, because we didn't make any assessments of the quality of education in the region. I just mentioned that we acceded to the European higher and professional education standards, we are signatories to the Bologna Process, and we invited them to align themselves with the European standards to improve student mobility and obtain recognition abroad. This was in fact the message”. Loretta Handrabura added that she also presented a number of problems and solutions to them. “We mentioned the problems facing the 8 schools providing education in Romanian script that are based on the eastern side of the Nistru and are subordinated to the legitimate authorities of Moldova, including rent payments, security of students in schools, transportation for commuter students. We also discussed procedures of recognizing education documents, issues related to the recognition and employment of graduates; we invited them to join the existing youth programs, an so on. The message was positive, in line with the confidence-building measures”, said Loretta Handrabura. The OSCE organized during September 6-8 an international conference which addressed, among other, confidence-building issues between the two sides of the Nistru River as part of the Transnistrian conflict settlement.