Number of students, pupils enrolled during current school year down by 20,000

The number of students and pupils enrolled in Romanian schools and universities during the 2017-2018 school year stood at 3,578,600, down by 18,700 year-on-year, data released by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) said.

A total of 3,597,300 pupils and students enrolled in schools and universities in the 2016-2017 school year, down by 45.300 year-on-year.

During the current school year, almost half of pupils were enrolled in primary and secondary education (46.9 percent), and about one-third in high school and pre-school and pre-school education (17.8 percent and 15.1 percent).

Of the total school population in the Romanian education system, 50.1 percent were male students and 71.4 percent studied in cities.

Compared to the previous school / university year, higher education and vocational education are the levels that registered increases in the school population, of 7.300 students and trainees, and respectively 5.800 pupils.

“90,200 pupils were enrolled in vocational education, remaining the lowest level of education in the total school population (2.5 percent). Primary and lower secondary education, as well as high school, experienced the most significant decreases in the number of students enrolled in the school year 2017-2018 compared to the previous one (down by 17,500 and 13,100) respectively,” the INS said in a press release.

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In the academic year 2017-2018, 538,900 students were enrolled in higher education, of which 54,2 percent were students.

The most attractive fields of study for university students specialisations (according to the ISCED-F classification) in higher education were business, administration and law (23.8 percent of all students), respectively engineering, manufacturing and construction (21 percent of total students).

In territorial terms, the school population in the school/ university year 2017-2018 was most numerous in the North-East (623,000 persons), respectively Bucharest-Ilfov (506,800 persons).

“The distribution of the school population by development regions and educational levels compared to the total of each region shows that the highest share was recorded in primary and secondary education in the South-Muntenia region (54.4 percent), while higher education was predominant in the Bucharest-Ilfov region (34.8 percent). At the opposite end, the lowest shares were recorded in post-secondary education and vocational education in the Central, North-East and Bucharest-Ilfov regions (2 percent each),” the press release said.

In the school / university year 2017-2018, the teaching staff of the educational system amounted to 236,200 persons. Thus, the average ratio of the school population per the number of teachers was 15 pupils / students per teacher.

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