More than 15,000 education employees gave up the strike after the adoption of the ordinance that provides salary increases, said the Minister of Education, Ligia Deca, on Tuesday, after the meeting with the representatives of the unions, students and parents. The national exam calendar – the National Assessment and the Baccalaureate – remains unchanged for now, with Deca announcing new negotiations with the unions for Wednesday.
The percentage of those who are still on strike exceeds 52%, but in 1,000 educational units no employee is on strike, according to the minister.
“At this moment, since the adoption of the GEO, we have about 15,000 people who have given up the strike, of which 10,000 are teachers.We have 1,000 schools where the strike has ended. This is a gesture of trust. We will resume talks with the unions tomorrow and we can see a return to classes,” Deca said, according to Euronews.
Ligia Deca stated that there are counties where the percentage of those on strike is very small, but also counties where 80% of employees are still protesting.
“For example, we have counties that have around 25% participation from the total staff – I am referring here to Prahova and we also have counties where the participation is still quite high, for example Hunedoara, where it is somewhere around 80%. What we happy is the downward trend, it is clear that slowly, slowly, the teaching staff is returning to the classes, the staff is returning to the schools and this allows us, as we discussed with the school inspectors since yesterday, that at the level of each educational unit it is possible to organize a recovery program, in such a way that, until the end of the courses and until the end of the school year, we can have both an educational recovery, and people can recover the days they will not have paid in their monthly salary May, as a result of the protest actions”, the minister said.
When asked how many teaching staff are still on strike, the Minister of Education showed that the centralization of Tuesday, until 10:00, showed that 52.8-52.9% of the teaching staff were still participating in the strike, and of these 59.4% were professors.
The calendar of national exams – National Assessment and Baccalaureate – remains unchanged for the time being.
The education general strike, the biggest such protest in 18 years, has entered its third week, and education unions have announced that the teachers’ strike will continue until their demands for both pay and “the future education”.
The Baccalaureate is scheduled to kick off on June 12, while the National Assessment (the high school entrance exam) on June 19. About 183,000 8th grade students have to take the National Assessment, and 142,000 12th grade students have to take the Baccalaureate. Education minister had warned that these exams might be postponed if the were not to go back to school soon.