Pupils in grades I-VIII will be assessed against single national standards, from the 2026-2027 school year

A parent who receives a mark or a grade will be able, from the 2026-2027 school year, to look up in a public document exactly what the child was supposed to know in order to be given that particular result. The Ministry of Education and Research has published in the Official Gazette of Romania the national assessment standards for grades I-VIII, through Order no. 4.615/2026. The order joins the series of acts through which the national curriculum has been rewritten bit by bit, a series that also includes the new framework curricula for upper secondary school.

The order itself has eight articles and fits on a single page. The substance lies in the 31 annexes, published separately, in edition no. 674 bis of the Official Gazette of Romania of the same day, where they occupy pages 3-969, that is 967 pages. Annex no. 1 is the explanatory note, annex no. 2 is the education policy document on performance descriptors, annex no. 3 is the central list of subjects, and annexes nos. 4-31 contain the standards themselves, subject by subject.

The legal basis is Article 95 paragraph (2), read together with Article 97 paragraph (2), of the Pre-University Education Law no. 198/2023, the text which states that all assessments are carried out on the basis of the national assessment standards. The standards were drawn up under the project „New regulations for a relevant curriculum and open education”, RECRED for short, SMIS code 321024, co-financed through the Education and Employment Programme.

The difference from the situation so far is not that one more document appears. The explanatory note states it directly: for the first time, assessment has attached to it an explicit, unified and public curricular benchmark, separate from the school syllabus.

What it changes in practice

The same benchmarks in the classroom and in the examination. The standards become the compulsory reference both for internal, day to day assessment and for the national assessments and examinations. The explanatory note spells out the consequence: no learning outcomes may be assessed other than those established by the curriculum, and no requirements from outside it may be introduced.

Three performance levels, described in observable terms. The model uses Level 2 (Basic), Level 3 (Consolidated) and Level 4 (Advanced), set out in an explicit progression: from working in familiar contexts, with support, through to working independently in complex everyday contexts. The descriptors are built, as a rule, around a single action verb, precisely so that they can be applied consistently.

The structure of a standard is fixed. It starts from a specific competence in the school syllabus, then the learning standard is formulated, that is what the pupil knows, does and values after the learning experiences of one school year, and then the three performance levels are described. A national assessment standard therefore means the learning standard plus the descriptors of the three levels.

The levels are anchored psychometrically, not merely described in words. Because descriptors applied purely on the basis of professional judgement can carry a degree of subjectivity, the standards come with the structure and the specifications of the tests, with a calibrated item bank and with a procedure for setting the performance thresholds, known as standard setting.

They connect directly to the national assessments and to the 2030 baccalaureate. In primary and lower secondary education, the standards are the benchmark for the national assessments in grades II, IV, VI and VIII. The explanatory note shows that the same logic runs up to the new structure of the national baccalaureate examination, configured through Article 102 of Law no. 198/2023, which the document calls „Baccalaureate 2030”.

Aggregated results become an instrument of public policy. National assessments measured against the standards can reveal, for example, systematic difficulties with interpreting data or with building an argument, not merely with one particular chapter, and that information guides teacher training, textbook writing and remedial measures.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

The explanatory note sets the change out in a table of contrasts, along five dimensions. On the question of what is assessed, the traditional emphasis fell on the final answer and on reproducing information, whereas it now falls on competence, meaning reasoning, transfer, decision and verification.

The benchmark for assessment was, until now, the individual preference and the level of demand of the assessor. It becomes a set of common, explicit and public level descriptors. A mistake is no longer merely a shortcoming to be penalised, but diagnostic information used to adjust the learning process.

The interpretation of the result moves from comparison between pupils, that is norm referenced assessment, to measurement against performance levels, that is criterion referenced assessment. And the effect on learning should shift from learning geared towards the test to learning geared towards the outcomes set in the curriculum. The document names outright the effect it is trying to correct: „what is not assessed is not learned”.

Another change of vocabulary is deliberate. The term chosen was „learning standards”, not „content standards”, precisely in order to make clear that the benchmark is not the list of topics taught, but the result of the learning.

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