“Educated Romania” is the national project initiated by the President of Romania to support the repositioning of society on values, the development of a culture of success based on performance, work, talent, honesty and integrity. The approach has been designed for the future, with the whole approach trying to meet the challenges of the coming decades.

“Educated Romania” is the largest and longest-running public consultation on public policy in education to date. This initiative expresses the wish of the President of Romania that every Romanian should have the opportunity to contribute to the project, with the consultation based on the expectations of the whole of society, not just experts.

The “Educated Romania” project started in 2016 and was structured in the following three phases:

• The first phase (2016-2017) involved a series of activities such as eight consultations on the country vision and goals for education (regional debates), development and dissemination of an online questionnaire, 35 consultation events organized by third parties.
• The second phase (2017-2018) built on the vision elements identified in the previous phase to continue the consultation on the strategy for education towards 2030.

To this end, the Presidential Administration set up seven working groups to develop the conclusions of the first phase into a package of detailed strategies on the following priority themes: teaching careers; fairness in the education system; professionalization of education management; quality vocational and technical education; autonomy, quality and internationalization in higher education; early education accessible to all; assessment of pupils and students.

The materials produced by the working groups and the conclusions of the first phase events have been aggregated into a single document.

• The third phase (2018-2021) involved launching the documents resulting from the previous steps into public debate. Several debates, events, studies or projects were organized under the “Educated Romania” umbrella. At the same time, during this period, the Presidential Administration coordinated a project financed by the European Union Structural Reform Support Programme (SRSS), in the framework of which four public policy briefs on the following topics were developed in cooperation with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): (1) teaching careers, (2) educational management, (3) fairness, (4) early education. Each paper complements the “Educated Romania” proposals with examples of best practices from the international environment and proposals for actions to help achieve the 2030 targets.

The results launched for public debate constitute the basis of the Governance Program for 2020- 2024. Their operationalization has also been included as a commitment in the National Defense Strategy for 2020-2024. All results, milestones and activities are described in detail on the project website: www.romaniaeducata.eu.

The Presidential Administration, through the Department of Education and Research, is currently working on finalizing the results of “Educated Romania” in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. The priority is also to link the goals of “Educated Romania” to the discussions on the next EU financial cycle.