number of schools small and pupil
enrollment low.

Little progress was made in improving the scope and substance of public
education until the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early
part of the twentieth. Beginning in 1893, the country's educational
process underwent extensive reorganization: the structure and functions
of elementary and normal schools were revised, the curricula of
secondary schools and institutions of higher education were revamped,
and the position of vocational training in the system was strengthened.
Although these advances served to improve the quality of education then
available, the number of state-supported schools continued to be low.

Romania's territorial acquisitions after World War I almost tripled its
population and added greatly to the problems of public education.
Educators considered the system deficient in many respects through the
1930s and the mid-1940s, but they succeeded in achieving considerable
uniformity among the school programs at the various educational levels
and, in the main, imparted a basic general education to the majority of
pupils who completed courses through the secondary school level.

Precommunist Education

The educational system that had evolved in precommunist Romania was
operated largely, but not exclusively, by the state and reflected the
traditional European order of the times, in which the socially and
economically privileged classes were the chief recipients of the
benefits of education. Only a limited number of children of the
peasantry received more than the four years of elementary education
required by the state, and both they and the children of the urban lower
classes were discouraged from going on to secondary schools either by
the lack of sufficient institutions or by the inability of their parents
to pay tuition fees beyond the compulsory level. The public,
state-supported system administered by the Ministry of Education
consisted of kindergartens, elementary schools, secondary schools,
vocational schools, and institutions of higher learning. Academic
standards were generally high, and advancement was based primarily on
scholastic merit.

Kindergartens were open to children between the ages of five and seven
in both state and private schools. No specific subjects were taught and,
although theoretically compulsory, attendance was seldom enforced.
Attendance records for the 1929-38 period indicated that only
approximately 13 per