Ring the Bell
One of the goals of this blog is to facilitate best practice sharing among CEE countries to speed up their development. The below one is definitely an educational best practice that brings business and schools closer in Romania.
Guest blog post by Valentina Capotă, Inspector for the Economic Fields of Studies, Bucharest Educational Inspectorate, Romania
I think school bells sounded differently in Romania in the first week of April, following the initiative of the Ministry of Education to implement a program entitled “A Different School”. The pilot program gave schools full flexibility to take initiatives and set their timetable in synergy with students’ interests and talents, connecting them with business and society.
“This week’s activities allowed us both to know ourselves better and learn in a more interactive way: a visit to a museum, a shadowing day in a multinational company, a study tour in a historic location and a community service project,” said Mircea Zamfira, high-school student at the International Computer High-School of Bucharest.
Education may be too formal sometimes, too rigid and too equalizing to allow children to be themselves. This pilot program, which is extended nationwide, represents a first for the Romanian national educational system and is an innovative concept within the Europe 2020 framework for a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy.
Teamwork stimulates creativity and imagination skills
Connecting the business sector with the public school system is a prerequisite for matching education to the real needs of the economy and to the changing expectations of today’s employers. I have also encouraged schools to plan learning-by-doing projects in partnership with NGOs in order to develop horizontal skills like creativity, leadership, initiative and self-confidence.
“Junior Achievement was a partner to 486 Romanian schools for this special week program, leveraging financial allocations including GE Foundation’s grants,” explained Stefania Popp, Country Executive of Junior Achievement Romania.
GE's Romanian top management exchanged views with students
I am confident that this program will strengthen people’s ability to identify and create opportunities in the economic, social and cultural fields. I also hope it will ring a bell in CEE countries and they will consider the Romanian initiative a best practice to implement regionally in order to increase the competitiveness of the new generation of young leaders. A strategy to ensure that future education is based on entrepreneurial activities is also mandatory to further stimulate initiative and innovation. It is the right educational response to the economic challenges ahead.
What do you think? Would it be good to implement this in your country? Who should ring the bell for the next generations? Share your thoughts below.
Governments, businesses and NGOs of the CEE region, please watch out for this Romanian best practice. It is easy to implement while the impact on the next generation is huge.
This government decision was indeed an opportunity to promote a different approach in education in Romania. Interest from teachers and students for interactive, ‘learning by doing’ activities that go beyond the classroom surpassed our initial expectations, with over 24 000 students involved in JA Romania activities. We are also proud that one of the 10 activities chosen by the Ministry of Education out of thousands of applicants as national best case practices is a JA program implemented by one of our teachers.
Impact on participants is indeed considerable and we are glad to have GE as one of the partners who support us in delivering this impact.
I think it’s an excellent way to attract students back to the classrooms, it gives them a sense of belonging and success. It makes them a lot more motivated and interested in what is going on in their school, in fact, nowadays young people have lost interest in the community, they are mostly concerned only about their own needs, however, this initiative is a wonderful idea ,and yes ,I would definitely implement this in Hungary as well.
This sounds like a really great initiative! We in Bulgaria would like to learn more about it – especially the way schools communicated with the students to design together the flexible curriculum for this one week. Congratulations to Junior Achievement and GE in Romania!
This indeed sounds like a great project! I believe that all educational systems, especially in the CEE countries, need projects like this one. According to the recent statistics, our educational system is constantly falling behind the modern trends in education. We hope to be able to do something similar here in the Czech Republic. JA and GE Romania did a great job!