Education in Moldova: A Leader in Spending, Lagging in Results

While 80% of Moldovan citizens are satisfied with the performance of the education system, pupils in our country lag behind in reading, mathematics and science, according to the PISA 2009+ study. In this ranking of 74 countries, Moldova placed 59th in mathematics, 57th in science and 65th in reading. At the same time, between 2000 and 2012, Moldova made very modest progress in the education index calculated by the United Nations Development Programme, from 0.676 to 0.714, compared with Romania (from 0.722 to 0.821), Ukraine (from 0.775 to 0.860) or Slovakia (from 0.807 to 0.870). As regards spending, in 2012 MDL 7,397 million was allocated to education (MDL 527.9 million more than in 2011), that is 20.9% of total National Public Budget expenditure and 8.4% of GDP. Although there is an increase in current prices, over the last two years we observe a decrease in constant prices for this component of budget expenditure. The infographic also shows the evolution over the last decade of the number of pupils and institutions (2002/03 – 2012/13). Thus, while in 2002/03 an average of 380 pupils were enrolled in primary and general secondary education, in 2012/13 this average fell by 31% to 280 pupils. At the same time, other types of educational institutions recorded increases in the average number of pupils/students: from 270 to 290 for vocational secondary education institutions; from 240 to 650 for specialised secondary education (colleges); and from 2,110 to 3,010 for higher education. At the same time, the total number of institutions decreased from 1.7 thousand to 1.5 thousand, and the average number of teaching staff fell from 51 thousand to 44 thousand. Data collection and analysis: Victoria Vlad.