In brief
- The pilot programme of intensive preparation for the baccalaureate, approved two days earlier for 20 high schools and colleges in ten counties and in Bucharest, is extended from the twelfth grade to the eleventh and twelfth grades. The regime stays confined to the last two modules of the school year and to the three pilot years, from 2026-2027 to 2028-2029.
- The change that shows up on the timetable is the other one. From Article 10(b) of the base order the words „for each subject” disappear. The guarantee that no subject drops below the number of hours in the framework curriculum therefore survives only at the level of the curricular area, that is the group of subjects, not of each individual subject.
- What does not change: the minimum number of teaching weeks, the list of subjects in the framework curriculum, full coverage of the syllabus, marking, the national assessments and the baccalaureate calendar. The annex listing the 20 schools stays exactly as it was, with no unit added or removed.
Published: Official Gazette of Romania (Monitorul Oficial) No. 773 of 11 September 2026
In force from: 11 September 2026, the date of publication
Two days after it entered into force, the pilot baccalaureate preparation programme running in 20 high schools was rewritten in two places. Order of the Minister of Education and Research No. 5.616 of 4 September 2026, published in Official Gazette of Romania No. 773 of 11 September 2026, amends Order No. 5.557/2026, the one that had granted pilot unit status to the 20 schools. The first amendment moves the programme up by a year, from the twelfth grade to the eleventh and twelfth grades. The second changes a single letter of the order, Article 10(b), and removes from it the hours floor that protected each individual subject.
The base order works through derogations. For three school years, and only in the last two modules of the year, the 20 units may organise teaching in modules, may deliver up to 40% of the hours on the timetable asynchronously and may cover certain subjects intensively in dedicated modules, with priority for the examination subjects. Article 10 of that order is the list of limits accompanying the derogations: seven conditions the pilot programme has to observe in any event.
Letter (b) was one of them. In the version published on 9 September, it required the derogations to apply „without any reduction below the minimum number of teaching weeks per school year and without any reduction below the number of hours laid down by the framework curriculum for each subject and for each curricular area”. In the version published on 11 September, the words „for each subject and” have gone from the text. The rest of the letter is identical.
The difference is one of substance, not of drafting. The framework curriculum allocates hours at two levels, and the order itself said so in its original version: by curricular area, that is by group of related subjects, and by each subject within the group. The „Language and communication” area has a weekly total, and within it Romanian, the first modern language and the second modern language each have their own allocation. After the amendment, the area total stays protected; the allocation of each subject does not.
The second amendment is a substitution of phrases throughout the order: „the twelfth grades” becomes „the eleventh and twelfth grades”, and „of the twelfth grades” becomes „of the eleventh and twelfth grades”. The phrases occur in five places, in Articles 4, 5, 6 and 9 and in Article 10(a), that is exactly in the articles describing the model, the derogations and the limits. The effect is that everything that could be done in the twelfth grade can now be done in the eleventh as well.
What it changes in practice
The order applies from 11 September 2026, the date of publication. It does not provide for a later date, and the three-day rule concerns laws and ordinances, not ministerial orders. From that moment, the amended version of Order No. 5.557/2026 is the one that applies in the 20 units.
The first effect touches the number of pupils. Until now the model concerned a single year group per unit, the twelfth-grade pupils. It now concerns two, the eleventh and the twelfth, in the same schools and in the same window of time. The annex listing the 20 units stays unchanged, so no new schools join the programme, but in each school roughly twice as many classes do.
The second effect shows up on the timetable. The same derogations now apply in the eleventh grade: a flexible timetable, organisation in modules, at most 40% of the hours on the timetable delivered asynchronously, intensive coverage of certain subjects in dedicated modules, assessment through projects and a portfolio alongside ordinary marking. All of this only in the last two modules of the school year, not throughout the year.
The third effect is the one produced by the amendment to letter (b). A pilot school may, in principle, rebalance hours within a curricular area: add hours to an examination subject and take them from another in the same group, provided the area total stays as set in the framework curriculum. What remains forbidden can be read in the neighbouring letters, which the order leaves untouched: no subject may be dropped from the framework curriculum, the syllabus has to be covered in full, and the general and specific competences and the graduate profile may not be affected.
The fourth effect concerns teaching staff. With two classes in the programme instead of one, the limits in Article 10(f) and (g) start to press harder: the total number of hours worked annually by each teacher may not exceed the statutory annual load, monthly pay has to stay constant throughout the school year, and all of it has to fit within approved budgets, with no additional spending from the state budget.
The fifth effect belongs to the calendar and is felt in each school. Lessons for the 2026-2027 year began on 7 September, and the order changing the rule appeared on 11 September. The pilot projects had been submitted by the units individually under the old rules, and the school’s own organisation and operating regulation, required of each unit by Article 11 of the base order, now has to take in one class more and one limit less.
What has changed compared with the previous situation
The previous version lasted two days. The base act was published on 9 September 2026 and entered into force the same day; on 11 September 2026, two of its provisions already read differently. In that interval the hours floor per subject was indeed in force, and schools building their timetables on 9 and 10 September were working with it.
The first change, in the order in which the act writes it, is letter (b) of Article 10. The old text required two hours floors, one per subject and one per curricular area. The new text requires only one, per curricular area. The floor on teaching weeks is untouched in both versions.
Next comes the extension to the eleventh grade. It is done not through a new article but by replacing a phrase wherever it occurs, a technique Law No. 24/2000 permits but which leaves the reader to reassemble the text unaided. A head teacher wanting to know what is allowed now has to read two orders side by side, because the consolidated version of Order No. 5.557/2026 has not been republished.
The combined effect of the two changes is clearest in Article 6, the article granting the derogation from the weekly hour allocations of the framework curriculum approved by Order No. 3.410/2009. Article 6 allows units to reorganise „the sequence and temporal concentration of the subjects in the common core and in the differentiated curriculum, by covering certain subjects intensively in dedicated modules”. With the per-subject floor in force, that concentration had to balance out by the end of the year for each individual subject. Without it, the only sum that has to come out is the one per curricular area.
What has not changed matters just as much. The three pilot years provided for in Article 3 remain the same: 2026-2027, 2027-2028 and 2028-2029. The window remains the last two modules of the school year. The other classes and levels of education in these units remain fully subject to the general rules in force, under the same letter (a) of Article 10. And the letters that protect the pupil, from (c) to (f), are reproduced unchanged.
Advantages and disadvantages
What it improves
- It makes the derogation in Article 6 usable. Covering a subject intensively in a dedicated module, as the base order promised, was hard to organise for as long as each subject had to close its own framework curriculum hour count within a window of two modules.
- It gives the programme a continuity it did not have. With the eleventh grade included, the same pupils can go through the pilot regime two springs in a row, instead of each year group catching it for a few months and no more.
- It leaves untouched the limits that matter to a pupil: no subject dropped, the syllabus covered in full, marking and the national assessments unchanged, the baccalaureate calendar untouched.
- It keeps the floor per curricular area, so hours cannot migrate from one area of learning to another. Mathematics cannot grow at the expense of Romanian, because the two sit in different areas.
- It does not extend the list of schools. The amendment works on the same 20 units that submitted pilot projects, not on a group enlarged in the meantime.
What remains a problem
- The per-subject floor has gone without the article granting the derogation being touched. Article 6 speaks of the sequence and temporal concentration of subjects, not of reducing their hour counts, so the extent of the new margin is settled school by school.
- There is no cap on the transfer of hours within a curricular area. The text does not say how far a subject may fall, only that the group has to keep its total.
- The amendment arrives after lessons have started, on 11 September, and the pilot projects had been submitted under the old rules. Each unit’s own regulation, required by Article 11, has to be redone during the year.
- In the eleventh grade, the stated purpose of the model, preparation for the national baccalaureate examination and for university admission, concerns an examination more than a year away, yet the regime for the two grades is not differentiated in any way.
- Article 9, which establishes which framework curricula apply to pupils in the programme, becomes equivocal for the eleventh grade in the final pilot year. The details are in the section below.
- The consolidated version of the base order has not been republished, even though the act was amended on the third day after entry into force, through phrase substitutions scattered across the whole text.
Practical advice
- If you have a child at one of the 20 high schools, check first whether they are in the eleventh or the twelfth grade. Only these two grades enter the programme, and only in the last two modules of the school year. The other classes in the same school remain entirely under the general rules, under Article 10(a).
- Ask the school for its own organisation and operating regulation. Article 11 of Order No. 5.557/2026 places there, not in the order, the specific arrangements for organising the educational process. That is also where you can see whether the unit has used the new margin and by how much each subject falls.
- Look at the total per curricular area, not at the isolated hour. After the amendment, a subject may receive fewer hours than the framework curriculum provides, but the group it belongs to has to keep its total. The areas are those in the framework curriculum: language and communication, mathematics and natural sciences, man and society, arts, physical education and sport, technologies, counselling and guidance.
- Remember what cannot be negotiated at school level. No subject may be taken out of the framework curriculum, the syllabus has to be covered in full, regulated marking and the conditions for closing the school record remain, and the baccalaureate calendar is not touched. These are letters (c), (d) and (e) of Article 10.
- If you teach at one of the units, ask for your workload in writing. Article 10(f) requires the total number of hours worked annually not to exceed the statutory annual load and monthly pay to stay constant throughout the school year, and with two classes in the programme instead of one the pressure on that limit grows.
- When you read the base order, read it together with this one. The amendment works by replacing phrases throughout, and the text published on 9 September 2026 is no longer the applicable text. The consolidated version has not been republished.
Frequently asked questions
What changes, in short, compared with last week?
Can my child end up with fewer hours in a subject?
What is a curricular area?
When does this regime actually apply?
Are other schools joining the programme?
How much of the timetable may be asynchronous?
How do I know whether my child’s school is using the new margin?
Why was the order amended two days after publication?
Where can I find the full text?
Errors and inconsistencies in the published text
- Article I point 1, the new version of Article 10(b). The hours floor for each subject is removed from the list of limits, but the article granting the derogation, Article 6, stays unchanged, and it authorises only the reorganisation of „the sequence and temporal concentration of the subjects”, not the reduction of their annual hour counts. Reading the two texts together, it cannot be established whether a pilot unit is allowed to end the year with fewer hours in a subject than the framework curriculum provides, offset within the same curricular area, or whether Article 6 still holds it to a simple redistribution over time. The two answers produce different timetables for the same pupil, and the order leaves the choice to each school’s own regulation, under Article 11.
- Article I point 2, applied to Article 9 of Order No. 5.557/2026. After the phrases are replaced, Article 9 states that pupils in the eleventh and twelfth grades at the units in the annex remain, for the whole duration of the pilot, subject to the framework curricula approved by Order No. 3.410/2009, and in the same sentence it states that the framework curricula approved by Order No. 4.350/2025 apply „in stages, starting with the 2026-2027 school year, exclusively to the ninth grade”. The pilot runs until the 2028-2029 school year, under Article 3, and the cohort entering the ninth grade in 2026-2027 reaches the eleventh grade in exactly 2028-2029. For that year, the first part of the sentence and the staged roll-out invoked in the second lead to different framework curricula for the same pupils. The consequence carries over to Article 6, which derogates only from Order No. 3.410/2009: if the 2025 curricula apply, the derogation is left without an object.
Editorial analysis
The amendment repairs something that was not working. The base order promised, in Article 6, intensive coverage of certain subjects in dedicated modules, that is the very opposite of a uniform timetable. Yet Article 10(b) required each subject to end the year with its framework curriculum hour count intact, and the room for manoeuvre covered only two modules out of five. In such a setting, temporal concentration amounted to moving hours from one week to another, not to a genuine rearrangement of the year. Removing the per-subject floor is, from this point of view, the condition without which Article 6 remained decorative. The problem is not that it was removed but that it was removed on its own, without Article 6 saying within what limits the margin thus opened may be used.
The extension to the eleventh grade solves, almost quietly, the most serious weakness of the original design. With the intervention fixed exclusively on the twelfth grade, the three pilot years did not follow one cohort but three different cohorts, each for a few months, so there was nobody on whom the effect could be measured twice. With the eleventh grade included, the arithmetic changes: the eleventh-graders of 2026-2027 are the twelfth-graders of 2027-2028, and the eleventh-graders of 2027-2028 are the twelfth-graders of 2028-2029. Four cohorts touch the programme, two of which go through it in two consecutive springs. It is the first time the intervention can be assessed on the same pupil. The assessment instrument, however, has stayed the one in Article 12, an annual report submitted within two weeks of the end of teaching activity, built around the school year rather than around the pupil’s path.
The chronology of the two orders says more than their content. Order No. 5.557/2026 was signed on 31 August 2026 and published on 9 September. The order amending it was signed on 4 September, four days after the first and five days before it reached the Official Gazette of Romania, and the explanatory memorandum underpinning it carries that same date of 4 September, 43 days after the memorandum for the base act. In other words, the ministry had decided the text needed rewriting before anyone outside it could read it. The practical consequence is that the hours floor per subject was actually applicable for exactly two days, 9 and 10 September 2026, and the amendment was published on 11 September, four days after lessons began.
An asymmetry remains that the order does not address. The model is called, in Article 4, intensive preparation for the national baccalaureate examination and for admission to higher education, and it now applies identically to two grades standing at different distances from that examination. For the twelfth grade, the last two modules end on 4 June 2027, ten days before the first written paper. For the eleventh grade, the same modules end on 18 June 2027, and the examination comes a year later. The same 40% margin of asynchronous study and the same freedom to compress subjects mean different things in the two situations, and the order draws no distinction between them.
What should be changed
- A statement, in Article 6, of the limits of the margin opened by the new letter (b). A text saying expressly whether the annual hours of a subject may fall and may be offset within the same curricular area. Effect: the 20 schools build their timetables on the same rule, and families know in advance whether a subject can lose hours, instead of finding out from the timetable posted in April.
- A cap on the transfer of hours between subjects within a curricular area. At most one hour a week for each subject giving hours up, for instance. Effect: the examination subjects gain time without any subject dropping to a token single hour, the only protection left today being the ban on removing it altogether.
- Clarification of Article 9 for each of the three pilot years. The text ought to say which framework curriculum applies to eleventh-grade pupils in 2028-2029, when the cohort that entered the ninth grade in 2026-2027 gets there. Effect: the situation in which the same sentence leads to two different framework curricula disappears, and the derogation in Article 6 has a definite object.
- Republication of Order No. 5.557/2026 in its amended form. The amendment works by replacing phrases throughout the act, and the text in Official Gazette of Romania No. 765 is no longer the applicable one. Effect: a head teacher or a parent reads a single document rather than two, and the risk of applying the old letter (b) disappears.
- A distinct regime for the eleventh grade, at least as regards which subjects may be compressed. Effect: pupils a year away from the baccalaureate do not lose hours in subjects that are not yet examination subjects for them but that condition coverage of the syllabus in the twelfth grade.
- Aligning the report under Article 12 with the pupil’s path, not only with the school year. A report by cohort, at the end of the two consecutive springs the same classes now go through. Effect: the ministry compares the same pupils in the eleventh and in the twelfth grade, the only comparison that can say whether the model changed anything.
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. 773 of 11 September 2026 16 pages PDF, 103 KB the act starts on page 14
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