Parents of Hungarian students in Cluj/Kolozs County have appealed to the Romanian Ministry of Education to remedy the discriminatory treatment of their children in the Romanian written exam.

Parents of Hungarian students in Cluj county claim that their children were discriminated against in the Romanian language and literature exam held on July 1, 2024 because they did not mark their papers indicating that they were studying in Hungarian-language classes.

The need to mark the Romanian written papers of Hungarian graduates came after Romania introduced digital marking of papers for this year’s final exams, with the marking teacher being chosen by the system. This means that Hungarian students’ papers may be sent to a teacher who does not teach Hungarian students , so he or she may not know that the Hungarian children are not as proficient in Romanian as their ethnic Romanian colleagues and may mark their papers down. According to the officials, this is the reason for the poor results of Hungarian graduates in the spring test examination, which is why the idea of assigning Hungarian students’ papers to teachers familiar with their level of knowledge was raised as a solution.

In most Transylvanian counties the request was granted, but in Cluj/Kolozs county it was refused, claiming that no official instruction had been given. Marking is not required by law, but it is not prohibited either.

Hungarian parents in Cluj County have also launched an online petition addressed to the Ministry of Education and the National Council for Anti-Discrimination (CNCD). In it, they accuse the Cluj County Examination Boards of discrimination and call for an urgent solution to the situation. The petition had been signed by five hundred people by 3 July.

On Wednesday, July 3rd the CNCD was also contacted by the Advocacy Group for Freedom of Identity (AGFI), an NGO from Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár. In a statement, it said in its complaint that certain groups of Hungarian-language 12 graders have been unjustifiably discriminated against, as marking papers leads to more favourable treatment for students in minority-language classes, but puts Hungarian students whose papers are not marked at a relative disadvantage.

Source: HHRF