On the day of the National Evaluation (EN) results, I want to congratulate all the students who gave their best for this exam! Facing the most competitive school exam at the age of 14 is a significant accomplishment!

I have a question for parents: Did you know that Romania is the only country where, at 14, students face the most competitive school exam of their lives? It’s an exam where scoring 9.70 gets you in, but 9.69 means you fail.

It seems serious, competitive, and positive, but the effect is quite the opposite.

Recently, I’ve heard many voices of confused parents and exhausted children after the National Evaluation.

A mother of an 8th-grade boy wrote: “He came out of the math evaluation sad and furious. He made a mistake on something he knew. How could he lose such important decimal points? What if he doesn’t get into his desired high school?“

The impact on the child and family’s morale feels like a major failure. For a 14-15-year-old, not getting into the desired high school feels like “you don’t belong, you have no value,” even if it’s just by a few decimal points.

Theoretically, the National Evaluation is a performance competition, a tough exam that demands serious and sustained work from students. Admirable, right? However, the effect on the interest in school is quite the opposite.

The exam itself is a harsh lesson that no matter how much you do, it’s never enough.

After the exam, children don’t want to hear about learning for at least two years.

We know that the National Evaluation was created with a noble purpose, but it hasn’t served that way for a long time. I admire the students, parents, and teachers who still idealize this exam. For some, it even works.

As a parent and co-founder of Avenor College, I have worked with our team of teachers for the past 10 years to find an alternative form of evaluation. It’s for those who want a more relevant assessment at the end of 8th grade.

Besides report card grades, the International Checkpoint Evaluation is taken in Mathematics and Science. For Romanian, the final exam is a public speech, and for English, students take the FCE (First Certificate of English).

These assessments are designed to evaluate what’s important at 14 years old and to foster lifelong learning.

Therefore, there are schools where learning is supported by coherent systems, where the curriculum, teaching methods, and evaluation are interconnected. Where the relationship based on trust between school, parents, and students is not just a story, and where there are well-trained teachers and visionary leaders.

Seek out these schools.

It takes a united community (a village) to raise a child, and even more so, to raise an adolescent.