In brief
- Twenty high schools and colleges, from ten counties and from Bucharest, are granted the status of pilot education unit from the 2026-2027 school year. Five are in Bucharest, three each in Argeș and Mureș, two in Brăila.
- The pilot touches only the twelfth-grade classes and only the last two modules of the school year. Up to 40% of the hours on the timetable may be taught asynchronously, that is without in-person attendance, with study time concentrated on the baccalaureate and university admission subjects.
- The baccalaureate is left untouched. The order expressly prohibits any change to the examination calendar, to marking and to the national assessments, and the number of hours and the subjects in the framework curriculum may not be reduced.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) No. 765 of 9 September 2026
In force from: 9 September 2026, the date of publication
A twelfth-grade pupil at one of the twenty high schools on the list will be able to spend, in the spring of 2027, close to two days a week outside the classroom. Order of the Minister of Education and Research No. 5.557/2026, published on 9 September 2026, grants the status of pilot education unit to 20 schools and approves, for their final-year classes, a model of intensive preparation for the baccalaureate examination and for admission to higher education. The order comes two days after the one that set out the network of 289 practice schools for 2026-2027, the other category of units with special status governed by the same 2020 government decision.
The list sits in the annex to the order and has 20 entries. Five schools are in Bucharest: Colegiul Național „Spiru Haret”, Colegiul Economic „Nicolae Kretzulescu”, Colegiul Național „Gheorghe Șincai”, Liceul Teoretic Bilingv „Ita Wegman” and Colegiul Național „Ion Luca Caragiale”. Three are in Argeș county: Liceul Teoretic „Dan Barbilian” in Câmpulung and the national colleges „Ion C. Brătianu” and „Zinca Golescu” in Pitești. Another three are in Târgu Mureș: the national colleges „Unirea” and „Alexandru Papiu Ilarian” and Liceul Romano-Catolic. Two are in Brăila, the national colleges „Nicolae Iorga” and „Gh. Munteanu Murgoci”.
The remaining seven are spread one per county: Colegiul Național „Octavian Goga” in Sibiu, Colegiul Național „Dimitrie Cantemir” in Onești, Bacău county, Liceul Tehnologic „Constantin Brâncuși” in Sfântu Gheorghe, Covasna county, Colegiul Național „Vasile Lucaciu” in Baia Mare, Liceul Teoretic „Petru Cercel” in Târgoviște, Colegiul Național „Emanuil Gojdu” in Oradea and Colegiul Național „Mihai Eminescu” in Petroșani. The list runs to exactly 20 entries. The annex announces no total.
Fourteen of them are national colleges. The rest are three theoretical high schools, one of them bilingual, one economic college, one technological high school and one Roman Catholic high school. The annex does not say what each of them is piloting, because it does not need to: the intervention is the same for all of them and is written into Article 4 of the order. What differs from school to school is the pilot project, submitted individually, which establishes how the margin the order opens up is actually used.
The model has five components. The first is the modular organisation of teaching and a flexible timetable, with in-person attendance alternating with asynchronous study, in a proportion of no more than 40% of the hours on the timetable, with time concentrated on the examination subjects. The second is a mixed programme of preparation for the baccalaureate and for admission, run face to face and asynchronously, on digital learning platforms and on open educational resources. The third adds to ordinary assessment a set of interdisciplinary projects, the pupil’s educational and digital portfolio, self-assessment and peer assessment, without replacing regulated marking. The fourth consists of the interdisciplinary activities and projects organised by teams of teachers, including thematic weeks and learning labs. The fifth is the recognition, within the teaching workload of the teachers involved, of the work of designing, coordinating, mentoring, monitoring and assessing.
To make all this possible, the order opens four derogations. Article 5 lifts the rule on full-time day education and the rule on recording pupils’ attendance, Article 6 the weekly hour allocations in the framework curriculum for theoretical and vocational upper secondary education, Article 7 the instruments for assessing school progress, and Article 8 the staffing norms for teaching staff. Article 9 is not a derogation but a clarification about the framework curricula that remain applicable. Article 10 then sets limits, seven of them, and these are the part that matters most to a parent.
The general rules for building what is taught have changed as well: MEC Order no. 4.617/2026 rewrites the methodology of the national curriculum, in 51 articles.
What it changes in practice
The order applies from the date of publication, 9 September 2026. Article 14 says only that the act is published in the Official Gazette of Romania, without providing for a later date, and Article 12(3) of Law No. 24/2000 establishes that normative acts issued by the heads of specialist central public administration bodies enter into force on publication unless they provide otherwise.
The pilot period is 3 school years, from 2026-2027 to 2028-2029 inclusive, under Article 3: 2026-2027, 2027-2028 and 2028-2029, with the interval closing on 31 August 2029. Because the model applies exclusively to twelfth-grade classes, the three years do not follow one cohort but three different cohorts, each for a few months.
For this year, the windows are already known. The structure of the 2026-2027 school year, approved by Order of the Minister of Education and Research, acting, No. 3.194/2026, has five teaching intervals. The last two, the ones the order refers to, begin on 22 February, 1 March or 8 March 2027, at the decision of the school inspectorate, and stop on 23 April 2027, then resume on 5 May. For twelfth-grade day classes, the year ends earlier than for the others, on 4 June 2027.
The school days in these two intervals, weekends and public holidays excluded and 1 June 2027 taken out as a non-working day, fall this way: the fourth module has 45, 40 or 35 days, depending on where the mobile one-week holiday in February falls. The fifth has 22 days for a twelfth-grade class. In total, between 57 and 67 school days. A twelfth-grade year has 161 teaching days, the same figure in all three calendar variants, because the mobile holiday only shifts days between the third module and the fourth. The pilot therefore covers between 35% and 42% of the final year of high school, not a tail end of a few weeks.
What 40% means in hours depends on the specialisation. The framework curriculum in Annex No. 2 to Order of the Minister of Education, Research and Innovation No. 3.410/2009 gives a twelfth-grade class on the theoretical track 28 to 29 hours a week, across all four specialisations, from mathematics and computer science to social sciences. Forty per cent means 11.2 hours out of 28 and 11.6 out of 29, so at most 11 whole hours a week can be shifted into asynchronous mode. On a five-day timetable, that is close to two days.
Article 10 fixes what may not be touched. The derogations apply only to twelfth-grade pupils at the units in the annex, only in the last two modules and only for the duration of the pilot; the other classes remain fully under the general rules. There may be no reduction below the minimum number of teaching weeks, nor below the number of hours laid down by the framework curriculum for each subject and each curricular area. No subject may be dropped and full coverage of the syllabus may not be affected. The national assessments, regulated marking and the conditions for closing the school record may not be removed or replaced. The organisation, conduct and calendar of the baccalaureate may not be touched. The total number of hours worked annually by each teacher may not exceed the statutory annual load, and monthly pay stays constant throughout the year. And all of it has to fit within budgets already approved, with no additional spending from the state budget.
The schools owe two reports, an annual one and a final one, sent to the Ministry of Education and Research within two weeks of the end of teaching activity in each school year and of the end of the pilot respectively. Article 13 assigns the implementation to the Directorate-General for the Implementation of the NRRP, the Directorate-General for Equity and Performance in Pre-University Education, the school inspectorates and the schools listed in the annex. That order was rewritten two days after it took effect: Order no. 5.616/2026 carried the pilot into the eleventh grade and deleted the hours floor for each subject.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
Pilot units have existed in the system since 2020. Government Decision No. 559/2020, published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 635 of 20 July 2020, created them, and Order of the Minister of Education and Research No. 4.813/2020, in Official Gazette of Romania No. 773 of 25 August 2020, gave them a framework regulation. Since 2023 the legal basis is a different one: Article 24 of Pre-University Education Law No. 198/2023 takes over piloting and gives it an explicit purpose, that of underpinning public policy, and since 2024 the setting-up procedure sits in the Framework Methodology approved by Order of the Minister of Education No. 4.575/2024. On the same legal basis, ten more units received pilot-school status a day later: nine schools in Iași and Neamț plus the “Politehnica” high school in Bucharest, this time with the right to drop the board of administration.
The novelty is not the status but its content. Until now, ministerial orders approved lists of units, and what each of them was piloting stayed inside the project submitted by the school. Here, Article 4 writes the intervention into the text of the order itself, the same for all 20 units, and Articles 5 to 8 lift, again by order, the rules that would have stood in its way. This is the step from a list to a norm.
The second new element is Article 9, which does not open a derogation but closes a question. It states that twelfth-grade pupils at these schools remain under the framework curricula approved in 2009, and that those approved by Order of the Minister of Education and Research No. 4.350/2025 apply in stages, from 2026-2027, exclusively to the ninth grade. In other words, pilot status does not accelerate the move to the new framework curricula and does not create, within the same school, one cohort with two sets of rules.
The third is less visible: the order does not approve a specific pilot regulation. Both Article 2 of the 2020 framework regulation and Article 13(1) of the 2024 methodology require the organisation and functioning of a pilot school to be governed by a specific regulation, approved by order of the minister and tailored to the type of intervention. Here, Article 11 sends those provisions into the organisation and functioning regulation that each school writes for itself.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- The margin is a figure, not a vague formula. „No more than 40% of the number of hours provided for in the timetable” can be checked by anyone who opens the class timetable, unlike wording of the „flexible timetable” kind.
- The limits in Article 10 are written as prohibitions, not as recommendations: no hours cut, no subjects dropped, nothing touching the national assessments and the baccalaureate calendar.
- The perimeter is tight. Only twelfth-grade classes, only the last two modules, only three school years. The other classes in the same schools feel nothing, and the text says so expressly, in Article 10(a).
- The extra work of the teachers involved, that is interdisciplinary design, mentoring and monitoring, is recognised within their teaching workload, through Article 4(e) and the derogation in Article 8, instead of remaining unwritten volunteering.
- The new assessment adds, it does not replace. Interdisciplinary projects, the portfolio and peer assessment come on top of the regulated system, and Article 10(d) requires their results to be correlated with the curriculum standards and with the certification of competences.
What remains a problem
- The order was signed on 31 August and published on 9 September, two days after the first lesson of the year, even though the status is granted „from the 2026-2027 school year”, a year that had begun on 1 September.
- There is no specific regulation approved by order, although two acts in force require one, listing eleven elements. Three of them, the degree of complexity of the intervention, the expected results and the quality assurance mechanisms, appear nowhere in the order.
- The cross-reference in Article 5 does not lead where it says it leads, and without it asynchronous study runs straight into the teacher’s duty to record every absence. See the errata section.
- Two of the 20 units are on the technological track, while the framework curriculum from which the order derogates covers only the theoretical and vocational tracks.
- Not one extra leu. Article 10(g) requires everything to fit within budgets already approved, even though the model presupposes digital platforms, open resources, learning labs and coordination time between teachers.
Practical advice
- Look for the school in the list by town, not by county. The annex gives the county at only three of the 20 entries and otherwise names only the town. Entry 8 is in Onești, Bacău county, entry 9 in Sfântu Gheorghe, Covasna, entry 14 in Târgoviște, Dâmbovița.
- If the pupil is in the ninth, tenth or eleventh grade at one of these schools, nothing changes for them. Article 10(a) says the remaining classes stay fully under the general rules in force.
- Ask the school for the pilot project. Article 4 says each unit submits it individually, and it is there, not in the order, that you find how the maximum 40% of asynchronous hours is actually used and in which weeks it falls.
- Ask in writing, before February 2027, how attendance is recorded for asynchronous lessons and who confirms participation. It is the weakest point in the act and it is better settled in advance than discovered in the register.
- If you do not want the pupil in the programme, Article 19 of the Framework Methodology approved by Order No. 4.575/2024 gives you two levers: the unit may request early termination of the pilot where parents ask to withdraw, and the ministry may decide to terminate it where a majority of parents so request.
- The diploma and the examinations are not negotiated at school level. Article 15 and Article 19(4) of the same methodology state that taking part in a pilot does not affect the right to study documents, to transfer, to continue studies and to sit national examinations. If you are told otherwise, ask for the legal basis in writing.
- Teachers involved: the recognition in Article 4(e) does not mean extra money. Article 10(f) expressly requires monthly pay to stay constant and annual hours not to exceed the statutory load.
Frequently asked questions
What does it mean that my child’s high school is a pilot unit?
Does anything change about the baccalaureate?
Which classes are affected and when?
How many hours can be asynchronous, in figures?
Will my child stay at home two days a week?
Are hours or subjects lost?
What happens to marks and to the average?
How long does the pilot last and what comes after it?
Can a pupil transfer to another school during the pilot?
Do the schools get extra money for the programme?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Art. 5, the cross-reference to Art. 9(6) of the Framework Regulation approved by Order No. 5.726/2024. The order describes that paragraph as „concerning the recording of pupils’ attendance at teaching activity”. In the consolidated version of the regulation, Art. 9(6) says something else: „În situațiile prevăzute la alin. (4), activitatea didactică se poate desfășura în format online sau hibrid”, that is, in the situations set out in paragraph (4), teaching may be delivered online or in hybrid form, which concerns the suspension of in-person lessons. Attendance is governed by Art. 94(1) of the same regulation: „Prezența beneficiarilor primari la fiecare oră de curs se verifică de către cadrul didactic, care consemnează, în mod obligatoriu, fiecare absență”, that is, the teacher checks attendance at every lesson and must record every absence. Art. 9 has not been amended since the regulation was published in August 2024, so this is not a case of intervening renumbering. The consequence is practical: the derogation that would make asynchronous study possible without absences in the register has no object, and read literally it would forbid pilot schools of all schools to work online or in hybrid form when lessons are suspended, that is the exact opposite of the purpose of the act.
- Art. 6 and Art. 9, read against entries 6 and 9 in the annex. Both articles rest on Order of the Minister of Education, Research and Innovation No. 3.410/2009, whose Art. 2 approves the framework curricula for the eleventh and twelfth grades only on the theoretical and vocational tracks, day classes. The annex, however, includes Colegiul Economic „Nicolae Kretzulescu” in Bucharest, which teaches on the technological track, services profile, and Liceul Tehnologic „Constantin Brâncuși” in Sfântu Gheorghe. Their twelfth-grade classes fall under the framework curricula approved by Order No. 3.412/2009, for the technological track. For these two units, the derogation in Art. 6 has no object, and the statement in Art. 9 that twelfth-grade pupils „rămân sub incidența planurilor-cadru aprobate prin Ordinul nr. 3.410/2009”, that they remain covered by the framework curricula approved by Order No. 3.410/2009, does not fit them.
Editorial analysis
The order tackles a real problem. The final months of the twelfth grade are, in practice, a period in which the official timetable and the actual preparation for the baccalaureate run in parallel, with the gap covered by private tuition paid for by the family. A framework that lets the school concentrate time on the examination subjects, instead of requiring formal attendance at every lesson, is an attempt to bring inside what was happening outside anyway. The limits in Article 10 are seriously drafted: seven prohibitions, four of which protect the pupil directly.
What you cannot see from reading the act is how large the window actually is: on the structure of the school year, a twelfth-grade class has 161 school days in 2026-2027, and the last two modules hold between 57 and 67 of them, depending on where the mobile February holiday falls. That means between 35% and 42% of the final year of high school. Add the ceiling of 40% of the 28 to 29 weekly hours, that is 11 hours, and the result is that a pupil at one of these 20 schools can spend, in the last part of the final year, close to two days a week outside the classroom. A second calculation says even more: because the intervention touches only the twelfth grade, the three pilot years do not follow one cohort but three different cohorts, each for a few months. The 2024 methodology requires, in Article 18(2), planning across a whole education cycle where the innovation is of high complexity at curriculum level. The order stays below that threshold by design, since it changes neither the framework curriculum nor the syllabus, only the order in which they are covered. The choice is prudent, but it has a price: the effect will not be measurable across a pupil’s path, only across their last months of school.
The second observation concerns the reporting calendar. Article 12 requires the annual report within two weeks of the end of teaching activity for each school year. For twelfth-grade classes, that activity ends on 4 June 2027, so the deadline falls on 18 June 2027, the very day of the last written paper of the baccalaureate. Even if the period is counted from 18 June, when lessons end for the other classes, the report is due on 2 July, and the final results of the first session appear on 1 July 2027. Either way, the report on an intervention whose stated purpose is preparation for the baccalaureate reaches the ministry without the one figure that matters, or one day after it. The ambiguity itself deserves clearing up: at a school where final-year classes stop two weeks earlier, the phrase „teaching activity for each school year” has two meanings.
The third concerns the foundations. The order cites, side by side, the 2020 framework regulation and the 2024 methodology, and Article 2 requires compliance with both. The 2020 acts were issued on the basis of Article 26 of National Education Law No. 1/2011, repealed by Article 250(1)(a) of Law No. 198/2023, and Government Decision No. 559/2020 refers on, in Article 2(3), to the application of that same 2011 law. None of this invalidates the order, which correctly rests on Article 24 of the new law. It does explain why the requirements are duplicated and why one of them, the specific regulation approved by ministerial order, required in identical terms by Article 2 of the 2020 regulation and by Article 13(1) of the 2024 methodology, remains unmet. From the same source comes a drafting slip: Article 10 lists „the derogations provided for in Art. 6-9”, even though Article 5 is also a derogation and Article 9 is not. The derogation concerning the form of education and attendance is thereby left outside the seven limits that Article 10 imposes on the others.
What should be changed
- Correcting the cross-reference in Article 5. Instead of Article 9(6), the derogation should target Article 94(1) of the Framework Regulation approved by Order No. 5.726/2024, the one requiring the teacher to record every absence. Effect: asynchronous hours stop being, on paper, absences, and schools no longer need a local reading in order to start the programme.
- Adding Order No. 3.412/2009 to Articles 6 and 9. Without it, the economic college in Bucharest and the technological high school in Sfântu Gheorghe cannot reorganise the sequence of subjects in the twelfth grade, even though they appear in the annex. Effect: the model applies to all 20 units, not to 18 out of 20.
- A specific pilot regulation, approved by order of the minister. It is required by Article 2 of the 2020 regulation and by Article 13(1) of the 2024 methodology, with eleven elements listed. Effect: the degree of complexity, the expected results and the quality assurance mechanisms, all missing at present, are given a place, and the evaluation at the end of the three years has something to compare against.
- Moving the deadline for the annual report to after the baccalaureate results are posted. For instance 15 July, instead of two weeks from the end of lessons. Effect: the report contains the pass rate and the averages of the piloted class, not just a description of activities.
- Including Article 5 in the list in Article 10. Effect: the derogation on the form of education and on recording attendance comes under the same seven limits as the rest, including the one protecting the conditions for closing the school record.
- Publishing the order by the end of May. Pilot projects are submitted individually by schools, and the model touches the twelfth-grade timetable. Effect: head teachers build the timetable once, and families learn before the summer holiday what regime the final year of high school will follow.
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 of 9 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 115 KB the act starts on page 11
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