In brief
- „The regulatory documents of the national curriculum” are four concrete things: the framework curricula, that is which subjects are taught and how many hours a week each one gets, the school syllabuses for compulsory subjects, that is what is actually taught in each lesson, the syllabuses for the optional subjects in the national offer and the national assessment standards, that is the yardstick against which a pupil’s knowledge is measured. The new methodology says who writes them and what route they travel up to the minister’s signature.
- A framework curriculum goes through 7 stages, with a public consultation written into the annex and a validation committee appointed by ministerial order. A school syllabus goes through 10 stages, but no public consultation appears anywhere in that list, and the groups that draft it are set up by an internal ministry note.
- Across the 51 articles there is a single deadline: 8 years, the maximum period of validity of a school syllabus. Not one stage carries a number of days. The 2014 methodology it replaces stayed in force for 12 years and had 21 articles.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) No. 765 and No. 765 bis of 9 September 2026
In force from: 9 September 2026, the date of publication
Nothing your child learns changes on 9 September 2026. What changes is the road along which the next change will travel. Order of the Minister of Education and Research No. 4.617/2026 approves a 29-page methodology setting out who drafts, who endorses and who approves the documents on which schooling is built: the framework curricula with the number of hours per subject, the school syllabuses with what is actually taught, and the assessment standards against which the result is measured. The most recent document of this kind, the framework curriculum for the German special sections in upper secondary education, was published on 1 September 2026, eight days before the methodology that says how it should be done from now on.
The title alone does not say what any of this is about. Article 1(2) breaks it down into four concrete documents: the framework curricula, the school syllabuses for compulsory subjects, the syllabuses for the optional subjects included in the national offer, and the national assessment standards attached to the common-core subjects. All four are mandatory across pre-university education, paragraph (3) adds. A parent meets them under other names: the timetable, what is covered in class, and the mark.
The methodology has 51 articles grouped into 9 chapters, plus 6 annexes. It applies to early childhood education and to primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education, theoretical and vocational tracks. For technological upper secondary schools and for post-secondary education, Article 5(2) refers to a separate methodology, which has not yet appeared.
Three institutions are involved. The ministry approves, by order. The National Centre for Curriculum and Assessment, CNCE for short, provides methodological coordination throughout the process. For technological upper secondary and post-secondary education, the National Centre for the Development of Vocational and Technical Education takes part in the drafting and in the endorsement.
The route of a framework curriculum, as Annex No. 1 describes it, has 7 stages: the ministry initiates it, a committee set up by ministerial order drafts it, then comes the public consultation or debate and the publication of a summary report, then the revision, then the analysis by a validation committee which issues an advisory opinion based on the grid in Annex No. 2, then the final version, then the decision-making transparency procedure for the order, and the signature.
The route of a school syllabus, in Annex No. 3, has 10 stages: it is drafted by subject working groups set up by a ministry note, debated by the National Subject Committees for Curriculum, revised, submitted where appropriate to a debate among specialists and practitioners, revised again, given a technical and methodological endorsement by the CNCE structures, put into final form, documented, then the order goes through the decision-making transparency procedure and is signed.
Across the whole text there is exactly one deadline: Article 47(2) states that the periodic revision may not exceed the standard period of validity of school syllabuses, 8 years, counted from the moment the first cohort of pupils works through the syllabus in full over a year of study. Beyond that, not a single number of days for a single stage. The word „days” appears once in the 29 pages, in a grid in Annex No. 2, where it refers to the pupil’s workload over a school day.
While the methodology is being rewritten, twenty high schools get a regime of their own: MEC Order no. 5.557/2026 designates them as pilot units, with up to 40% of twelfth grade lessons taught without in-person attendance. A day later, ten more units received the same status, this time focused on leadership rather than the timetable: nine schools in Iași and Neamț and the “Politehnica” high school in Bucharest may drop the board of administration.
What it changes in practice
The order applies from 9 September 2026, the day it was published. Article 4 says only that it is published in the Official Gazette of Romania, without fixing a later date, and Article 12(3) of Law No. 24/2000 provides that normative acts issued by specialist bodies of central public administration enter into force on publication unless they provide otherwise. Also from 9 September 2026, Order of the Minister of National Education No. 3.593/2014 is repealed, after holding the field for 4,452 days, that is more than 12 years.
The immediate effect on pupils is zero. The methodology changes not one hour of the timetable and not one item of content in any syllabus. It applies to documents that will be drafted or revised from now on, while the framework curricula and syllabuses currently in force stay as they are.
The practical effect begins with the first new document. Every draft framework curriculum or syllabus must from now on be accompanied by a substantiation note. For framework curricula, Article 15(2) requires four elements: the justification of the curricular design, the elements of novelty, the analysis of the impact on pupils and teachers, and references to the data and studies used. Until now no such list existed, and drafts could be published without saying what they rested on.
The second consequence is that every new school syllabus will look like every other. Annex No. 6 fixes five mandatory sections: an introductory note, general competences, specific competences with examples of learning activities, content, and methodological guidance. The same annex states expressly that the methodological guidance may not be reduced to general recommendations that would fit any subject, and that specific competences may not be worded identically from one year of study to the next.
The third consequence concerns assessment. The national assessment standards, provided for by Article 85(7) of Pre-University Education Law No. 198/2023 as far back as 5 July 2023, now receive, after 1,162 days, a chapter of their own saying who produces them. As a rule they are drafted by the same working groups that write the syllabuses, with extended remits, supplemented where needed by specialists in educational assessment and psychometrics.
The fourth concerns optional subjects. School inspectorates must compile every year how many schools run each optional subject from the national offer and how many pupils take it, broken down by level and by class, and the ministry aggregates the data nationally. On that basis, CNCE proposes how the offer should develop. The instruments and deadlines for this reporting are, however, to be set separately by the ministry, under Article 45(7).
Public consultation, meanwhile, remains a promise as far as duration goes. Article 40 requires the ministry and CNCE to publish the draft together with „information on the manner and deadline for submitting proposals”, without saying how long that deadline is. The only firm durations come from outside: Article 7 of Law No. 52/2003, invoked by Article 27 of the methodology, requires the announcement to be made public at least 30 working days in advance and leaves at least 10 calendar days for proposals. Except that this period runs on the draft order, at the end of the road, when the content is already settled. Where that floor no longer binds is set out in a September order: in the 20 pilot high schools the guarantee per subject has been replaced by one per curricular area.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The old methodology had 21 articles and a single annex, a diagram of the stages for approving syllabuses, printed across 5 pages of Official Gazette of Romania No. 490 of 2 July 2014. The new one has 51 articles, 6 annexes and 29 pages. The difference is not only one of volume.
A type of document has been added. Until 9 September 2026, the national curriculum meant framework curricula and school syllabuses. National assessment standards did not even exist as a legal concept, since they were introduced only by Law No. 198/2023. They now have a chapter of their own, Articles 28 to 34.
Quality criteria have been added, written down and published. Annex No. 2 contains the grid by which the validation committee judges a framework curriculum, with principles and performance indicators. For school syllabuses, the same job is done by Annex No. 4. Then comes the analysis report in Annex No. 5, which every working group must fill in component by component, in the form of evaluative questions. The 2014 text said, in Articles 20 and 21, only that the evaluation follows a set of criteria established by the Institute of Educational Sciences and passed on to the working groups, without those criteria ever coming into public view.
Monitoring and a time limit have been added. Chapter VIII requires the ministry to track systematically how the documents are applied, along five lines of enquiry, and Article 47 sets the 8-year ceiling on periodic revision. The 2014 methodology contained neither a monitoring obligation nor any deadline.
The institutions have changed. The Institute of Educational Sciences and the National Centre for Assessment and Examination, which in 2014 issued the scientific endorsement, have disappeared from the text. In their place comes CNCE, established by Government Decision No. 251/2025.
And things have been lost. The 2014 methodology had special routes for cases that do not fit the pattern: drafts for alternative education systems were written by their representatives and endorsed by the National Committee for Alternative Education, those for religious education were drafted together with each denomination, those for military high schools with the Ministry of National Defence, and those for post-secondary education in defence, public order and national security by a group made up of representatives of three ministries. None of these routes appears in the new text, and the repeal in Article 2 is total. Technological upper secondary and post-secondary education are lost there too: the 2014 methodology covered them, the new one removes them from its scope, and the specific methodology promised by Article 5(2) had not appeared by 9 September 2026.
The most visible absence concerns minorities. The word does not appear at all in the 29 pages of the methodology. In 2014, Article 9(2) provided that syllabuses for education in the languages of national minorities are drafted in the mother tongue and translated into Romanian, while Article 8(6) gave approval of the composition of those groups to the state secretary for education in minority languages. The new order does, however, keep the Directorate-General for Minorities and Desegregation, in Article 3, among the structures charged with carrying it out.
The part that touched the school directly has also gone. In 2014, Articles 11 to 18 set out how the school-based curriculum was established: teachers wrote the syllabus for the optional subject, the teaching council endorsed it, the board of directors approved it, and the inspectorate issued the scientific endorsement. The new methodology contains nothing on this and refers, in Article 21(6), to the methodologies on the curriculum chosen by the pupil from the school’s offer, approved by Order of the Minister of Education and Research No. 3.454/2026.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The quality criteria are written down and published. Anyone wishing to challenge a syllabus now has, in Annexes No. 4 and No. 5, the exact questions the working group was required to ask itself.
- Every new syllabus will have the same five sections, under Annex No. 6, so a teacher opening a syllabus for another subject finds the information in the same place.
- The substantiation note becomes mandatory and its content is fixed, four elements for framework curricula, under Article 15(2). Drafts can no longer appear without saying what they rest on.
- The national assessment standards, required by law since 2023, finally get a procedure, with an express obligation to be correlated with the specific competences in the syllabuses.
- A time ceiling appears where there was none: 8 years from the point at which the first cohort of pupils has worked through the syllabus in full, under Article 47(2).
What remains a problem
- Not one stage carries a deadline. Across 51 articles and 5,551 words, the only figure that measures time is the 8-year ceiling.
- The phrase „where appropriate” appears 16 times in the articles and another 10 times in the annexes, and in most places it attaches to precisely the consultation steps, which thereby become optional.
- Public consultation on school syllabuses is required by Article 24(1), yet it does not figure among the 10 stages in Annex No. 3, unlike framework curricula, where consultation is the second stage in Annex No. 1.
- The criteria for selecting the people in the working groups are to be established through procedures drawn up by CNCE, under Articles 14, 20 and 29, and those procedures are not published in the Official Gazette of Romania.
- Publication in the Official Gazette of Romania is expressly required only once, in Article 38, for the order approving the optional subjects in the national offer. For framework curricula, compulsory syllabuses and assessment standards, the text says only that they are published „in accordance with the legal provisions in force”.
- Technological upper secondary and post-secondary education have been left uncovered. The old methodology covered them, the order repeals it in full, and the specific methodology announced in Article 5(2) had not appeared by 9 September 2026.
Practical advice
- If you want early warning of a change to a syllabus, follow the CNCE website, rocnee.eu, not only the ministry’s. Article 27(1) requires the draft order approving school syllabuses, together with its annexes, to be published there.
- When you see a draft out for consultation, read the substantiation note first, not the table of hours. It has to contain the analysis of the impact on pupils and teachers and the references to the studies used, and if those are missing you already have your objection.
- Send your proposals in writing, to the email address announced together with the draft. Article 42 requires a summary report giving the total number of proposals received and the main categories of comment, and that report is published on the ministry’s website.
- Ask for the summary report once the consultation closes. It is the only document showing how many comments came in, and its publication is mandatory, not optional.
- Teachers invited to join a working group should ask, when it is set up, for the specific CNCE procedure containing the selection criteria and the rules of operation. The methodology assumes it exists in Articles 14, 20 and 29, but does not publish it.
- If your interest is technological upper secondary or post-secondary education, note that this methodology does not apply to you. Article 5(2) refers you to a separate methodology, which as at 9 September 2026 had not been published.
- For the optional subject your child chooses at school, the act to read is not this one but Order of the Minister of Education and Research No. 3.454/2026, to which Article 21(6) refers.
Frequently asked questions
Does anything change in what my child learns, from 9 September 2026?
In plain language, what are „regulatory documents”?
Can I comment on a draft school syllabus?
How long does it take, from draft to order?
Who decides, in the end?
How often can syllabuses change?
What happens to technological upper secondary schools and post-secondary schools?
Does the methodology say anything about teaching in the languages of national minorities?
What is the graduate profile, which the text refers to throughout?
Why is the annex not in the same issue of the Gazette as the order?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Technological upper secondary schools and post-secondary schools are left with no methodology at all. Article 2 of the order repeals Order No. 3.593/2014 in full, and that order also covered these forms of education: Article 6(h) of the old text said who drafts the framework curricula for vocational, technological upper secondary and post-secondary education and that the endorsement is also given by the National Centre for the Development of Vocational and Technical Education. The new methodology expressly removes them from its scope: Article 5(1) limits it to early childhood education and to primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education, theoretical and vocational tracks, while paragraph (2) refers the technological track and post-secondary education to a specific methodology, unpublished as at 9 September 2026. The repeal is wider than the replacement, and an entire category of curriculum documents is left, from that date, with no written procedure.
- Public consultation on school syllabuses: two answers in the same act. Article 24(1) says that draft syllabuses for compulsory subjects „are submitted to public consultation under the conditions of this methodology”, and Article 43(1) provides that they are revised on the basis of the summary report of the consultation. Pulling the other way, Article 25(1) places the revision after the stage in Article 24(4), which is the debate among specialists and practitioners, Article 39(2) mentions for syllabuses only that debate, and Annex No. 3, which lists the 10 stages of the process, contains no public consultation stage at all, unlike Annex No. 1, where consultation is stage 2. Since the annexes form an integral part of the methodology under Article 51, it cannot be established whether a school syllabus must or must not be submitted to public consultation.
- Article 16(2) refers to a text that says nothing about the report it invokes. It provides that framework curricula are revised „on the basis of the summary report drawn up in accordance with Art. 34 of this methodology”. Article 34 of the methodology contains a single sentence: the national assessment standards are approved by order of the Minister of Education and Research, and the order and its annexes are published in accordance with the law. The summary report is governed by Article 42(2). The only condition attached to the revision of framework curricula after the public consultation is therefore left without a source.
- Three texts, three answers to the question of who endorses a school syllabus. Article 26 attributes the favourable technical and methodological endorsement to CNCE alone. Annex No. 3, at stages 6 and 8, attributes it to the structures of CNCE „and, where appropriate”, of the National Centre for Technological and Dual Technological Education, a name that appears nowhere in the 51 articles. Article 3(3) names, for technological upper secondary and post-secondary education, the National Centre for the Development of Vocational and Technical Education. Since the endorsement conditions the move to the next stage, misidentifying who issues it is a procedural defect.
Editorial analysis
The methodology was needed and is, for the most part, better built than the one it replaces. The 2014 text had been written under National Education Law No. 1/2011, rested on two institutions that no longer exist, the Institute of Educational Sciences and the National Centre for Assessment and Examination, and knew nothing of national assessment standards, since these appeared only through Article 85(7) of Law No. 198/2023. Annexes No. 2, 4 and 5 do something that had not been done before: they set down in black and white the questions by which a curriculum document is judged, including the uncomfortable ones, of the kind „is this number of specific competences reasonable in relation to the number of hours allocated to the subject?”. And Annex No. 6 expressly forbids generic methodological guidance that would fit any subject. Whoever wrote these grids has read bad syllabuses and knew why they were bad.
The trouble starts with the arithmetic of time: across 51 articles and 5,551 words there is a single figure that measures duration, the 8-year ceiling in Article 47(2). The word „days” appears once in 29 pages, in a grid in Annex No. 2, and there it refers to the pupil’s school day, not to any procedural deadline. By contrast, the phrase „where appropriate” appears 16 times in the articles and another 10 times in the annexes, and in Annex No. 3 four of the ten stages actually begin with it. A procedure in which every consultation step is conditioned by „where appropriate” and not one carries a deadline is not a procedure, it is a list of good intentions. The only durations that bind come from outside the act, from Article 7(2) and (4) of Law No. 52/2003, and those run on the draft order, at the final stage, when the content is already settled and all that can still change is the wording.
The second observation emerges only from comparing the two routes side by side. The framework curriculum, which decides how many hours a subject gets, receives the heavy treatment: the committee that drafts it is set up by order of the minister, the public consultation is stage 2 written into Annex No. 1, there is a validation committee with a published grid and a formal advisory opinion. The school syllabus, which decides what actually happens in those hours, receives the light treatment: the working groups are set up by a ministry note, that is by an internal act published nowhere, the ten stages in Annex No. 3 contain no public consultation, and the criteria for choosing the people are left to a CNCE procedure that never reaches the Official Gazette of Romania. Yet a parent never argues about the number of biology lessons. A parent argues about what is in the biology syllabus. The document they actually see has the thinner procedure.
The third observation is a curious piece of arithmetic. The text has grown from 5 pages to 29 and from 21 articles to 51, yet it covers fewer situations than the one it replaces. The six cases the old methodology handled separately, alternative education, religious education, military high schools, post-secondary education in defence and public order, teaching in minority languages, and the curriculum decided at school level, are nowhere in the new text. Only one of them has somewhere to go: the curriculum chosen by the pupil has its own methodologies, approved by Order No. 3.454/2026. For the other five, no relocation has been announced anywhere. The minorities case is the most concrete: the word does not appear in the 29 pages, even though the order keeps, in Article 3, the Directorate-General for Minorities and Desegregation among the structures charged with carrying it out, and the 2014 text had a clear rule, syllabuses are drafted in the mother tongue and translated into Romanian. A very practical question is left unanswered: in what language is a draft syllabus for Hungarian or German literature written, and who does the translation.
What should be changed
- A written deadline for each stage. For instance 30 days for the validation committee’s opinion, 30 days of public consultation and 45 days for the revision following the summary report. Effect: a draft syllabus can no longer sit in a drawer for two years, nor be pushed through every stage in a single week of August, and anyone waiting for it knows when to ask about it.
- The same consultation procedure for syllabuses as for framework curricula. A public consultation stage written explicitly into Annex No. 3 and a published summary report, as in Annex No. 1. Effect: the classroom teacher and the parent can send a comment on the subject syllabus, not just on the number of hours, and can see what became of it.
- Publication of the specific CNCE procedures on the composition of working groups. Articles 14(4), 20(3) and 29(4) presuppose them but do not say where they are to be found. Effect: who writes the syllabus by which a million pupils learn becomes verifiable information, not a list circulated internally.
- Repair of the three faulty cross-references. Article 16(2) should refer to Article 42(2), not Article 34; Article 25(2) to Article 20(2), not Article 21(2); Article 37(3) to Article 15(2), not Article 21. Effect: the revision of framework curricula acquires a real basis, and working groups sent to a text that talks about something else are sent where they should be.
- A transitional clause for technological upper secondary and post-secondary education. The repeal of the 2014 methodology should have been postponed, for these forms of education, until the specific methodology announced in Article 5(2) is published. Effect: curriculum documents for the technological track are no longer drafted, in the meantime, outside any written procedure.
- A written rule for syllabuses taught in the languages of national minorities. Either a restatement of the 2014 rule or an express reference to the act that contains it. Effect: the several hundred syllabuses in this category no longer depend on the local reading of an omission.
- The publication requirement in the Official Gazette of Romania, extended to all four types of document. At present it appears expressly only in Article 38, for the optional subjects in the national offer. Effect: the framework curriculum and the syllabus, that is the documents that produce effects for every pupil, can no longer reach the school as a file on a website and nothing more.
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. 765 and no. 765 bis of 9 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 115 KB the act starts on page 10
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The other editions cited: nr. 765 bis/2026
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