The Romanian Ministry of Education announced a public tender this year for a record 33 textbooks to be written in Hungarian. The Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) believes that the measure represents a genuine shift in policy and a milestone in Hungarian education in Romania, the minority party informed MTI on Thursday.
The RMDSZ views it as a significant step forward that the Ministry of Education in Bucharest’s textbook writing tender for 9th graders includes 33 textbooks to be written in Hungarian. The change is particularly important because the supply of Hungarian textbooks in Romania has long relied primarily on translations.
Legislation previously allowed for textbooks written in Hungarian only in a few subjects—Hungarian language and literature, the history and traditions of the Hungarian minority, music, and religion.
“This step is a milestone in Hungarian education in Romania: textbooks written directly in Hungarian not only represent linguistic progress but also provide a real opportunity for students to learn from modern, high-quality educational materials according to the logic of their own language” the statement quoted Zoltán Kallós, State Secretary for Minority Education.
He added that textbooks written in Hungarian are better suited to the learning environment, use more precise technical terminology, and are better aligned with the needs of mother-tongue education. The tender for the preparation of textbooks for 9th graders is linked to the introduction of the new curricula adopted last year.
The goal of the new curricula, to be introduced in the 2026–2027 school year, is to make education “more open,” which requires new textbooks to replace the publications used for the past twenty years.
The call for bids published on April 10 in Romania’s electronic public procurement system (SEAP) covers 113 textbook titles with a total value of 94.38 million lei, education portal Edupedu.ro reported. A new feature of this call for bids is that it covers a much longer period than previous ones; the winning publishers will be required to supply the publications for eight years, including annual reprints. This means that the publications selected now will still be available for students to use during the 2032–2033 school year.
The tender also covers reprints. Publishers must deliver the requested textbooks to the school inspectorates by September 1 at the latest each year. In Romania, the supply of textbooks in minority languages is regulated by Ministerial Decree No. 2026/3333. Based on this, textbooks may be produced in the language of the given minority, or they may be translations or imports. According to experts from the RMDSZ, the current call for proposals indicates that the system is increasingly moving toward the independent development of Hungarian-language textbooks.
Hungarian education is not only present in the system but is also being strengthened with its own content,”
they wrote.
According to Katalin Mihályfalvi, the RMDSZ’s executive vice president responsible for education, this breakthrough is closely linked to the textbook-writing program launched by the alliance to strengthen Hungarian-language education. Part of this was an intensive textbook-writing training session held in February with the participation of about 50 educators. She emphasized that their goal is an educational system where Hungarian students can learn in their own language from modern, high-quality textbooks.
Fact
For years, a major problem in Hungarian-language education in Romania has been that students primarily learn from Hungarian translations of Romanian-language textbooks. These are often linguistically inaccurate, contain literal translations, and, moreover, arrived late, months after the Romanian version was completed. As a result, Hungarian students in Romania regularly began the school year without textbooks for several subjects for months on end.
Via MTI; Featured photo: Pexels
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