Romania is the last European country in terms of the ability to keep children and young people in school, according to the latest annual report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on education, „Education at a Glance 2025,” published on Tuesday.
Our country stands out with an enormous percentage, 16% in 2023, of children aged 6-14 who are not enrolled in school, compared to an OECD average of only 2% in the same year, as shown in the report cited by Edupedu.
Among the OECD member and partner countries included in the report, only Saudi Arabia has a higher percentage.
The situation is even more serious among teenagers aged 15-19: a third of them (32%), in Romania, were not enrolled in any form of educational program in 2023.
In comparison, at the OECD level, only 16% of young people aged 15-19 were not enrolled in school in that year. And Romania’s situation was worse than in only one other state included in the report – Peru.
### Romania, the last country in Europe in terms of spending per student
Romania is also the last country in Europe in terms of spending per student in education, among the member and partner states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
**Romania spends 6,069 dollars per student, from primary school to post-secondary and tertiary education, placing it at the bottom of the list** of countries, ranging from 2,000 dollars to over 27,000 dollars per student, as indicated by the OECD.
Reported in terms of purchasing power, government expenditure on education per student (2022) is the lowest in Europe (excluding Turkey), among the OECD member and partner countries.
The only countries that Romania surpasses in this regard are Peru, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, China, Argentina, Costa Rica, and Chile. In Europe, Romania approaches the levels of Greece, Hungary, and Bulgaria.
### A quarter of 18-24-year-olds neither study nor work
Furthermore, Romania scores well below the OECD average and at the bottom of the European member countries when it comes to the ability to keep students in school.
The report notes that the proportion of young adults (25-34 years old) with at most lower secondary education has managed to decrease by two percentage points in the last 5 years, from 26% in 2019 to 24% in 2024.
But Romania ranks last in Europe in this regard, on par with Spain, with a percentage nearly twice as high as the OECD average (13% in 2024) and over twice as high as the EU average (11% in 2024).
At the same time, the OECD warns that the risk of unemployment is very high for young people aged 25-34 in Romania and refers, in this regard, to the high proportion of 18-24-year-olds who are neither employed nor studying (NEET).
If the NEET population average is 14%, in Romania, it rises to 22% – the highest percentage in Europe.
### What the Minister of Education says about the report
The Minister of Education, Daniel David, commented on the report, stating that when you are in a fiscal-budget crisis, you cannot always implement the best OECD practices.
„You see, **we are in a fiscal-budget crisis, when you are in a fiscal-budget crisis, you cannot always implement the best OECD practices**, but it is very important if you are a responsible minister or a responsible decision-maker that the measures you take are in line with OECD or European benchmarks if we want to refer to another indicator, so that once the country is anchored in these institutions, it can communicate, exchange data, ideas, and practices with other countries in these organizations.
We have managed, both in education and research, to close the chapters that concern us, which is a very good thing. Concern for what happens in OECD countries is justified in our fields because we often have a lot of analysis, a lot of data, but **as an old philosopher used to say, something is not big or small in itself, but it always depends on the frame of reference**.
And often we did not have the reflex or did not have a strong enough reflex to relate various data, various analyses to a national level, to certain benchmarks, to see what a certain percentage means, what a certain average means,” explained Minister Daniel David.
He emphasized the importance of looking at research practices to develop our own education system.