From January 1, this year the schools will receive more money from the state budget. The Government increased the components based on which the education institutions are financed - the cost per student and the norm per school. Thus, the sum allocated per student was raised to 8,771 lei, by 1,842 lei more compared with 2014. The norm per school was increased by about 30,000 lei to 428,900 lei, IPN reports, quoting a communique of the Ministry of Education.
Contacted by IPN, the head of the Chisinau General Division of Education, Youth and Sport Tatiana Nagnibeda-Tverdohleb said that despite the rise in state funding, the spending is much higher. The municipal schools include specialized classes that cannot be financed with money from the state budget. Therefore, additional allocations are planned from the municipal budget.
“The 91 million lei is not enough for ensuring the functionality of the specialized classes. We thus allocate additional financial resources. There are also classes with semi-internal regime (for first-fourth graders who remain at school after the lessons are over) that are not budget-funded. That’s why we receive also money from the municipal budget,” stated Tatiana Nagnibeda-Tverdohleb.
According to her, given that the municipal budget is tight, in the second half of this year the school managers may review the education programs so as to optimize costs.
Since January 2013, all the general education institutions have been financed according to a new formula. The schools receive financing from the state depending on the number of students. At the end of 2014, about 72% of the schools (929 out of 1,283) worked under a self-management regime. The other schools are financed through the agency of district/municipal education divisions. In the municipality of Chisinau, only 23% of the education institutions manage their budgets independently.
