In brief

  • No scholarship goes up and none goes down. The merit scholarship stays at 450 lei a month, the social scholarship and the technological scholarship stay at 300 lei a month, the same figures as last school year and the same ones Law no. 198/2023 had written for the 2023-2024 school year.
  • What moves is the expiry date of the amounts, not the amounts. The wording „For the 2025-2026 school year, the amount of the scholarships is” becomes „Starting with the 2026-2027 school year, the amount of the scholarships is”, so the figures are no longer tied to a single school year and remain in force until another decision changes them.
  • The scholarship for minor mothers finally has an end point. The definition of reintegration is completed with „until the completion of compulsory education”, that is, the end of high school. Until now the text said only „from the moment of return to school”, without saying when the entitlement stops.
Act: Government Decision no. 738/2026 amending Government Decision no. 732/2025 approving the Framework Methodology for granting scholarships and the amount thereof
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) no. 800 of 21 September 2026
Who it affects: pupils in full time daytime classes in compulsory State pre-university education, pupils in private and denominational schools who receive social or technological scholarships, pupils who have given birth and returned to school, and also school secretariats and county school inspectorates
In force from: 21 September 2026, the date of publication. The decision has a single article and sets no other date of its own, and under Article 12(3) of Law no. 24/2000 Government decisions enter into force on the date of publication in the Official Gazette of Romania, unless they provide for a later date

From 21 September 2026, school scholarships once again have an amount written into an act in force, and that amount no longer expires with the school year. Government Decision no. 738/2026 changes two paragraphs in the scholarship methodology approved last year and touches no figure: 450 lei for the merit scholarship, 300 for the social one, 300 for the technological one. What changes is the formula that ties the sums to the calendar. School scholarships were, incidentally, also one of the points the Constitutional Court struck out of the citizens’ initiative on the education laws in July 2026, as a rule of a fiscal nature that cannot be the subject of an initiative by citizens.

The annex to the 2025 decision said, in Article 6(1), „For the 2025-2026 school year, the amount of the scholarships is”. Classes for the 2026-2027 school year began on 7 September 2026, and that sentence did not cover them. The new text, „Starting with the 2026-2027 school year”, has no exit date: the sums stand in the years to come as well, until the Government changes them by another decision. For parents, that means the summer of 2027 no longer brings a stretch in which nobody knows what a child’s scholarship is worth.

The second change concerns the scholarship for minor mothers, the only one whose amount sits directly in the law rather than in the methodology: 700 lei a month, under Article 1081(14) of Pre-university Education Law no. 198/2023. The methodology defined reintegration as „the resumption of classes by the pupil after giving birth, from the moment of her return to school”, without saying when it ends. The new wording adds the end point: „until the completion of compulsory education”. Since Article 13(1) of the same law includes high school in compulsory education, the entitlement runs, in the ordinary case, to the end of the twelfth grade.

What it changes in practice

For a pupil who receives a scholarship, nothing moves in the account. The 450 lei of the merit scholarship continue to be paid during the period of classes, under Article 5(1) of the methodology. The social scholarship stays at 300 lei and is paid during holidays too, with the exceptions in Article 15(2) for the summer holiday. The technological scholarship stays at 300 lei. Payment is made on the 20th of each month, for the previous month, under Article 26(7).

For school budgets, the estimated sums sent in October are worked out on the old figures. The first list of beneficiaries goes to the inspectorate by 20 October 2026, and the inspectorates report to the ministry by 25 October. The fact that the decision appeared on 21 September, ahead of those deadlines, means the estimates do not have to be redone.

For pupils who returned to school after giving birth, the entitlement now has a horizon. A pupil who returns in the tenth grade has, under the new text, another three school years of scholarship ahead of her. At 700 lei a month and roughly ten months of classes a year, that comes to around 21,000 lei by the end of high school. Before the change, the duration depended on how each school read a definition with no end.

For the ministry, the pressure of an annual decision disappears. The words „starting with” turn the amounts from a decision about one year into a standing rule. Any future increase now calls for a deliberate move, not merely the renewal of a text that would have lapsed anyway.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Government Decision no. 732/2025 was published in the Official Gazette of Romania no. 823 of 5 September 2025. Its consolidated version on the legislative portal carries no amending note before the present act, so the text compared below is both the original version and the version in force up to 21 September 2026.

Article 6(1). Old version: „For the 2025-2026 school year, the amount of the scholarships is”. New version: „Starting with the 2026-2027 school year, the amount of the scholarships is”. Points (a), (b) and (c) are reproduced identically, with the same figures: 450, 300 and 300 lei a month. The difference in lei is zero, and the difference in percentage terms is zero. Only the period covered differs: a closed school year becomes an open series.

Article 18(3). The old version stopped at „from the moment of her return to school”. The new version continues with „until the completion of compulsory education”. The rest of the sentence, including the reference to the birth and to the resumption of classes, is unchanged.

What did not change, although it had been proposed. The draft put out for public consultation by the Ministry of Education and Research on 17 August 2026 contained eleven amending points. Two survived in the decision adopted on 18 September. Among the nine that fell are the proposal that social scholarships be granted only during the period of classes, by rewriting Article 5(1) and repealing paragraphs (2) and (5) of Article 15, the proposal that income declared by the family expressly include income earned abroad, the proposal to check income through the PatrimVen platform, an additional sworn statement on the genuineness of the documents submitted, and a narrowing of the medical certificates accepted for the social scholarship. The Government announced publicly, on 19 September 2026, that social scholarships continue to be paid for the whole year, holidays included.

Advantages and disadvantages

What it improves

  • The amounts no longer carry an expiry date, so there is no longer a risk that a school year begins with no sum written into an act in force.
  • The scholarship for minor mothers gets an explicit end point, and schools no longer have to decide for themselves when the entitlement stops.
  • The act is short and does not touch the conditions for granting, so the files already submitted in September 2026 remain valid with nothing to add.
  • Restricting social scholarships to the period of classes, proposed in August, did not make it into the adopted version, and payment during holidays is preserved.

What remains a problem

  • The sums are still those of 2023, with no updating, even though the gross minimum wage has risen from 3,300 to 4,325 lei over the same period.
  • The decision appeared fourteen days after classes began, at a point when the deadline for submitting social scholarship files was already running.
  • The new text of Article 18(3) says nothing about the pupil who turns 18 during her reintegration, even though the law speaks of „minor mothers”.
  • The replaced text covered the 2025-2026 school year and the new one starts from 2026-2027, so the methodology no longer contains any sum for the school year just ended.

Practical advice

  1. If you are submitting a file for the social scholarship, check the deadline: it is 25 calendar days from the start of classes, and for the 2026-2027 school year it falls on 1 October 2026.
  2. No application is needed for the merit scholarship. The form teacher sends the list to the secretariat, also within the first 25 calendar days from the start of classes, and for fifth grade pupils within the first 15 days of January.
  3. If the file is incomplete, you have at most 5 working days from the request of the Scholarship Management Committee to complete it. The period runs from the request, not from the submission.
  4. Do not confuse suspension with loss of the scholarship. Ten unexcused absences in a month mean the scholarship is lost for that month, but a medical excuse filed within 7 days of returning restores the entitlement, and payment can be made together with the following month.
  5. A pupil who has returned to school after giving birth should ask the secretariat in writing to confirm the period for which the scholarship is granted, precisely because the new text sets the end point at the completion of compulsory education without mentioning age.
  6. Check whether the school has published the calendar and the conditions for granting on its noticeboard and on its own website. The methodology requires it, and that is where you can see whether the school has taken on board the new version of Article 6.

Frequently asked questions

Do school scholarships go up from 21 September 2026?
No. The figures are the same as in the previous version of the methodology: 450 lei a month for merit, 300 for social and 300 for technological.
Then what changes in Article 6?
What changes is the period for which the sums apply. The old text tied them to the 2025-2026 school year; the new one says „starting with the 2026-2027 school year”, with no closing year.
How much is the scholarship for minor mothers and who sets it?
700 lei a month. The sum is fixed by Article 1081(14) of Law no. 198/2023, so it sits in the law, not in the methodology. The decision leaves it untouched and changes only the definition of the period for which it is granted.
What does „the completion of compulsory education” mean?
Under Article 13(1) of Law no. 198/2023, compulsory education covers pre-school, primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education, so it ends with high school. Paragraph (4) of the same article treats pupils in the technological track who obtain a level 3 qualification and do not go on to upper secondary studies as having completed compulsory education.
Does this decision mean a new file has to be submitted?
No. The act changes none of the articles governing the application, the supporting documents or the submission deadlines.
Are social scholarships still paid during holidays?
Yes. The proposal to restrict them to the period of classes did appear in the August 2026 draft, but it is not in the decision as adopted. Article 15(1) of the methodology is unchanged.
Who pays the scholarships of pupils in private and denominational schools?
They receive social and technological scholarships from amounts apportioned out of certain State budget revenues, through local budgets, under Article 2 of the methodology and Article 1081(3) of Law no. 198/2023.

Errors and inconsistencies in the published text

  • Single article, point 2, the new version of Article 18(3) of the annex. The text sets the end of reintegration at „finalizarea învățământului obligatoriu”, the completion of compulsory education, and Article 13(1) of Law no. 198/2023 includes high school in compulsory education, so the period runs, in the ordinary case, beyond the age of 18. Article 1081(14) of the same law, the basis of the scholarship, however grants the entitlement to „mamelor minore reintegrate într-o unitate de învățământ”, minor mothers reintegrated into a school. The two texts can be read in good faith in two opposite ways for the same pupil: either the scholarship continues to the end of high school, because that is what the methodology says, or it stops at majority, because the law speaks of minor mothers. The consequence is immediate, 700 lei for every month in dispute, and the published text offers nothing that would close the question.

Editorial analysis

The decision solves a real problem and solves it with economy of means. The scholarship methodology had been written in 2025 with a date glued to a single school year, and that way of writing guaranteed that every September the sums would hang in the air until the Government next met. Replacing „for the 2025-2026 school year” with „starting with the 2026-2027 school year” cuts that cycle. It is a correction of legislative technique, not a policy measure, but it is exactly the kind of correction that spares hundreds of thousands of families an annual spell of uncertainty.

The trouble is that this year the correction came after the uncertainty had already done its work. Classes began on 7 September 2026 and the act entered into force on 21 September, 14 days after the first day of school. Throughout that stretch, the only text on amounts in the methodology referred to the school year just ended. Set that against the deadline the act leaves standing for families: 25 calendar days from the start of classes for the social scholarship file, that is, until 1 October 2026. On the day the Government finally said what a scholarship is worth, 15 of those 25 days had gone by, days in which parents have to gather income statements, birth certificates, court rulings and social assessments. Ten were left. The administration, by contrast, had 32 days from the publication of the draft for consultation on 17 August 2026 to adoption, of which 22 came after the 10 days of public consultation had closed.

The second observation is not visible in the act itself but in setting its figures beside others. The three sums, 450, 300 and 300 lei, have not moved since Law no. 198/2023 came into force and fixed them for the 2023-2024 school year. In October 2023 the gross national minimum wage was 3,300 lei, and the merit scholarship came to 13.6% of it. Since 1 July 2026 the gross minimum wage has been 4,325 lei, and the same merit scholarship comes to 10.4%. In other words, without a single figure in the act moving, the relative value of the merit scholarship has fallen by almost a quarter, by 23.7% to be exact, in three years. On the social scholarship the effect is starker still, because the eligibility threshold is mobile by definition: a family qualifies if net income per member is below half the net minimum wage, a threshold that climbs with the minimum wage while the support stays at 300 lei. The formula „starting with the 2026-2027 school year” entrenches that position, because it turns a sum conceived as provisional into one with no end date.

The third observation comes from comparing the published act with the draft put out for consultation on 17 August 2026. The draft had eleven points, the act has two, so 82% of the announced changes were dropped along the way. Some deserved to be dropped, first among them the restriction of social scholarships to the period of classes, which would have cut support from precisely those families for whom the holidays bring extra costs, not fewer. Others were plain administrative measures, such as checking income through the PatrimVen platform, and would have spared school secretariats work they have no way of doing properly. The most important loss, however, runs to a single sentence: the draft wrote, in Article 18(3), „until the completion of compulsory education, including after reaching the age of 18”. The published version keeps the first half and drops the second. The very part that would have closed the argument about the pupil who comes of age during high school was taken out of the text meant to clarify how long the entitlement lasts.

What should be changed

  • Restoring the wording on age in Article 18(3). A single clause, „including after reaching the age of 18”, would remove the one place in the act where two schools can reach opposite conclusions in good faith about the same pupil. Without it, the difference is measured at 700 lei a month and will most likely be settled through appeals.
  • A transitional clause for the 2025-2026 school year. The new Article 6(1) starts from the 2026-2027 school year and no longer contains any sum for the previous one, even though arrears from that year can still be paid after 21 September 2026, under Article 19(6) of the methodology. A sentence preserving the amounts for entitlements that arose under the earlier version would close the question before it arises.
  • Tying the amounts to a moving benchmark rather than a fixed figure. If scholarships are expressed as a percentage of the gross national minimum wage, as the law already does for olympiad excellence scholarships, they update without a new decision. The practical effect: the merit scholarship would be 590 lei today, the 2023 value measured against the 2026 minimum wage, instead of 450.
  • Moving the adoption deadline ahead of the start of classes. The methodology asks families for 25 days from the first day of school, and schools for a first list of beneficiaries by 20 October. A symmetrical rule, under which any change of amount is published by 31 August, would line up the administration’s deadline with the one it imposes on the people it serves.
  • Picking up the administrative points from the August draft separately. Checking income through PatrimVen and expressly declaring income earned abroad are control tools, not austerity measures. Taking them out of the draft leaves the social scholarship resting on sworn statements checked by school staff who have neither access to tax data nor the power to carry out social assessments.

Original text of the legal act

The text below is reproduced in Romanian, the official form of publication.

The full text, as published in the Official Gazette of Romania

Official Gazette of Romania no. 800 of 21 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 182 KB the act starts on page 10

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This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. For specific situations, consult a licensed attorney or tax advisor.