Are you the headmaster or deputy headmaster of a public school?
Adequate salaries for school headmasters!
Open letter to the Government
Since we have already witnessed multiple resignations of headmasters and deputy headmasters, during the first academic year during which the Law on Pre-academic Education is applied, which is a strategic moment for education in Romania, we request that the Government enact an urgent measure intended to provide adequate wages to headmasters and deputy headmasters, in accordance with our role and mission.
The headmasters and deputy headmasters throughout the country take upon themselves responsibilities and change their communities for the better. In the context of the transformations we wish to see across education in Romania, they hold the strategic role of leaders, whereas the status and level of responsibility pertaining to the duties they undertake must also be acknowledged, among other things, in the form of adequate salaries.
This June, in reply to the general strike in education, the Government enacted an emergency ordinance (GEO no. 57/2023) by means of which it increased the teachers’ salaries. Nevertheless, the Government ignored the educational establishments’ headmasters. Present as early as 2019, June 2023 saw a significant increase in wage gaps between the teaching staff and the school headmasters. Why do we have that? In the case of teachers, the base salary increases with length of service, based on certain stages. On the other hand, in the case of headmasters, the salary is not at all influenced by length of service. In some cases, the discrepancy even reaches 900 lei/month, to their detriment.
As such, we have reached a point where taking on the role of headmaster or deputy headmaster is now unattractive to the teaching staff by not being effectively backed by support measures.
Are you a school headmaster?
Sign and support the initiative for adequate salaries!
We request adequate and attractive wages for school headmasters
In the long run, this can only be resolved by means of the new Framework law on the wages of staff paid from public funds, currently in the works at the Ministry of Labour. To reestablish a balance, we request that educational establishment headmasters be consulted on drafting the new unified wage law. We request to be present at the negotiating table and express our viewpoint, beside the syndicates and the Ministry of Education.
Things, however, cannot be left as they are in the short term, either. We request that, by September 1, 2023, the Government enact a statutory solution as a way to commit to one of the three proposals below, options designed to restore the headmasters’ dignity and acknowledge their role in school communities.
- Proposal 1: amending the current wage framework law (Law no. 153/2017), in the sense that the base salaries of headmasters and deputy headmasters should start from the same salary bonus for 0 length of service, thus allowing a proper application of salary bonuses specific to length of service categories.
- Proposal 2: providing the possibility to choose the salary we may receive: between the salary specific to the headmaster position and the salary we would be entitled to as teaching staff, provided that both options benefit from an embedded 10% increase of the base salary (currently enjoyed by form masters, primary school teachers, nursery school teachers and elementary teachers).
- Proposal 3: granting a monthly bonus to headmasters and deputy headmasters, from September 2023 to the entry into force of the new wage law, for a net amount of 1200 lei a month.
We have the legitimate expectation of being remunerated in line with the leadership position specificities, in a manner that reflects the headmaster and deputy headmaster’s strategic role within a school unit, with a salary exceeding those enjoyed by the teaching staff.
The present endeavour is initiated by AVE (The Association for Values in Education), at the suggestion of the community of school headmasters within AVE, participants in the association’s training programmes.
AVE (The Association for Values in Education) has been contributing for 8 years to the transformation for the better of education in Romania. AVE intends to facilitate taking education in Romania, by 2035, to Europe’s top 10, and to that end we pledge and support the headmasters’ transformative role.
Accordingly, AVE has trained 300 school headmasters through the Leadership and Educational Management Academy and, since 2017, has been making the civil society aware, with the Awards Gala for the Headmasters of the Year, of the best headmasters in Romania, those who transform their communities.
Fill out the form to support the initiative
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