Austerity measures wrapped in censorship and PR spin under minister Daniel David, a prominent professor, hit Romanian education hard / Boundaries fade between data-based decisions and political scheming in government efforts to find ways to cut costs

A series of austerity measures targeting teachers, students and school organisation came into effect in Romania starting Friday, as part of a larger budgetary and fiscal package. The changes, due to be applied gradually over the coming months, are a first step in the new government efforts to cut costs massively and bring balance to the state budget in an unprecedentedly difficult political and economic context. Proposed measures targeting the education have caused public uproar. They were supported by the Education minister, reputed university professor and researcher Daniel David, with acts of scientific censorship and attempts at PR spins.

• This happened despite that he has been promoting himself as a man of data-, science-based decisions, standing up against a wave of disinformation and conspiracies engulfing the society, as shown by recent elections. 

The measures now coming into effect are aimed at increasing the workload of teachers, reducing pay in certain circumstances, boosting the number of pupils per class, dropping or changing conditions for a series of scholarships. This happens in a country known for his worst records in the European Union when it comes to quality benchmarks for school systems.

They have caused a wave of discontent especially among teachers. The government, including prime minister Ilie Bolojan and Education minister Daniel David, have claimed they were a must – along other major budget and fiscal decisions such as increasing the VAT tax – as the Education sector is a major area of governmental spending. 

But the government did little to provide arguments for their decisions affecting teachers, pupils and schools, or provide data on the expected impact. This is even more relevant in a time where the whole austerity package is aimed at bringing balance to the budget in the wake of an electoral period when the same parties which now form the core of the current government had lost control in a spending spree that lasted years.

And when Edupedu.ro attempted to obtain answers from Education researchers on their role in supporting or not supporting the measures introduced in the sector, the Education and Research Ministry under Daniel David attempted to censor those answers. Then they tried to give a spin when the censorship was revealed, just as the new set of changes in the sector were due to come into effect.

Legal changes affecting Romanian education sector

The new law introducing fiscal and budgetary changes came into effect on Friday, July 25. What it brings to the education sector – key points (Note: links lead to articles in Romanian):

• The minimum compulsory time a teacher has to spend teaching, as part of his overall work, is increased for the first time in the past 30 years
• Hourly pay, which is still extensively used in Romanian schools, is cut by half
• The number of students per class is increased, despite years of efforts to provide the legal obligation to reduce the high number of pupils which form classes in crowded urban schools. In high schools, classes may have as many as 34 students, as compared to the current 26 
• Scholarship / grant funds for university students are cut by 40% and some facilities to transportation are cut
• Schools with few students have to re-organise, which means a reduction of the number of school principals by hundreds
• Two types of scholarships aimed at improving equity and supporting excellence are dropped, the latter are partly replaced with prizes, while the number of merit-based scholarships is reduced.
• A teacher at the start of their career, with university studies including teacher training, is expected to be paid as low as an unqualified day labourer

The government and the Education and Research Ministry have failed to provide proof-supported arguments for the changes, other than that the Education sector is a major area of spending for the government. That happens two years after a massive teacher strike led to an increase in teacher salaries, while the volume of scholarships has been increasing for the same period, under a government formed of Social Democrats and Liberals – who also form the core of the current government coalition. 2024 was an electoral year for Romania, which continued into 2025 with a decisive round of presidential elections in which the populist, radical movement gained huge ground – more on this below.

A case of censorship at ministerial level

Considering the lack of proper justification, Edupedu.ro has asked the public institute doing research in support of education policies, the Education Sciences Institute, if it was requested data related to the issues such as scholarships, teacher workload and pay, or class sizes, which were due to be changed with the new austerity package.

The answers which the Education Ministry – which holds organisational authority over the otherwise independent body – provided in the name of the Institute did not look like answers those researchers usually provide, while they included political press lines promoted by Education minister Daniel David (link to article in Romanian).

Edupedu.ro revealed on Thursday, July 24 (link to article in Romanian) that the Institute had provided a long, two dozen-pages of answers with extensive data challenging the decisions adopted by the ministry and the government, but that the ministry censored the document massively. It only left two pages of the total 23 and sent the remaining pages, which were also altered, to Edupedu.ro.

What the censored, data-based answers and expert opinions showed (link to article in Romanian – also here):

• Reorganising schools would overburden principals
• Increasing teaching time for teachers would place Romanian above the European average (despite minister David’s claims that suggested otherwise)
• Increasing the minimum teaching time would overburden teachers and deepen the crisis of qualified teachers in rural areas and in STEM subjects
• The savings obtained through cuts to scholarships should be used in education and the cuts would risk leading to increased social vulnerabilities

Minister David, who had already stated (link to article in Romanian) that he would block the institute from providing independent answers to the press, tried to give a spin to the story. He attempted to claim it was a research report / study which could not be put forward to the press without a ”peer review” (link to article in Romanian), despite it being just an answer for a media request of expert analysis. He also claimed a protocol between the institute and the ministry did not allow for such positions, but failed to provide details about the protocol, which is not mentioned in the law governing the institute.

A major freedom of speech organisation in Romanian, ActiveWatch, said (link to article in Romanian) that the existence of such protocols would be typical of non-democratic regimes and called for it to be made public.

And Edupedu.ro (link to op-ed article in Romanian) publicly called for the departure of minister Daniel David from the Education on Research Ministry, given the acts of censorship and altering data in this case.

The altered data practices at Education Ministry vs. the promise of data-based decisions in times ruled by disinformation and political turmoil

The censorship scandal comes at a hard moment for the current government: just in the past several days, another top official, Cristian Popescu Piedone, was ousted as head of the Customer Protection authority following an investigation by anti-graft prosecutor’s office (DNA). And, by Friday, another top official – deputy prime-minister Dragos Anastasiu – was the subject of revelations that he had allegedly admitted in court to his companies paying bribes – covered as ”a form of protection” – to a tax official for 8 years, in a now closed case. The revelations promptly led to public calls for him to resign.

• But the situation at the Education Ministry goes deeper, given the electoral context of the past two years.

When the current government was being formed in June 2025, minister Daniel David was the only member of the previous government whom newly elected President Nicusor Dan nominated, saying he wanted David kept in the new team. That was at a time of immense public pressure to deliver reform, built under duress in the wake of a terrible electoral period.

In late 2024, Romania held parliamentary elections, which saw unprecedented gains for radical parties with campaigns based on conspiracies and disinformation. Yet, the two parties who formed the government for the past 4 years, retained their position. 

Both parties – the Social Democrats (PSD) and the Liberals (PNL) – had supported various facilities for their target audiences, including pensions or local political moguls, which brought extreme strain on the budget, yet the election results were far from what they desired.

Also in late 2024, presidential elections almost saw the election of a populist, radical candidate, Calin Georgescu as head of the country, which came as a shell shock for the political system. A second round of elections was unprecedentedly cancelled, under claims of external interference. And new presidential elections were set for May this year. Another politician supported by radical, populist parties was again at the forefront. Yet in a major push Nicusor Dan – previously the mayor of Bucharest – won the election as an independent candidate.

• He opted for a large coalition government. This included both PSD and PNL, as well as other political groups. And while PNL has shown internal reform and came out with new leaders after the latest parliamentary elections, PSD only dropped its party president and is expected to choose its way in the upcoming period.

Since the previous government was formed in December 2024, the helm of the Education and Research was taken by Daniel David. Rector of the leading Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, center Romania, he’s been a reputed, internationally-connected scientist in the field of psychology. 

He built his stay at the ministry on the promise of necessary reforms. And he has been building a reputation of a man who supports the use of data and science to fight conspiracies (link to article in Romanian) and pseudo-science and disinformation (link to article in Romanian).

While most reforms remained just a promise during his first half-year long term, in May 2025 he delivered a ”report” on his view regarding the Education and Research sectors and what should be done to improve them.

But those reforms fell back from public view as soon as the new set of austerity measures came in. And he as a minister put up a very narrow set of defences – such as a ”no” salary cuts – when it came to interventions in the Education sector.

And there was hardly any argument on his behalf against measures affecting the sector, despite the the education chapter attracting way below the promised 15% of the budget and only slightly above 3% of GDP in 2025 (link to article in Romanian). This is much less than the European average, in a country where the education system comes last or among the last in the EU at almost all key benchmarks of quality education (link to article in Romanian), including PISA scores.

• Then, when it came to provide transparency for his decision making and publish the answers of education experts, minister Daniel David – who emphasises his titles as university professor and PhD holder, sometimes also as a professional in Psychology and a correspondent member of the Romanian Academy – chose the route of PR spins, with altered data and censored documents that fit political purposes.

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