Romanian teachers trapped for hours as exam platform crashes

Story Timeline
10 days · 11 summary articles
The first day of Romania’s 2026 *Evaluarea Națională* descended into chaos as a digital platform repeatedly crashed, trapping examiners in school buildings for up to eight hours while they waited to upload scanned student papers, teachers’ unions said on Monday.
Federaţiile sindicale din Educaţie accused the Education Ministry of humiliating teachers by keeping them “hostage” in exam rooms from the moment the Romanian-language test ended until late evening, as the online system repeatedly froze. “Professors were not allowed to leave until every scanned paper was uploaded,” a union spokesperson told Digi24 . The ministry countered that the platform operated, albeit “not within normal parameters,” and released the official marking grid for the Romanian test shortly after the exam concluded .
Elsewhere, an eighth-grader from Bihor County suffered a fainting spell at home but sat the same Romanian test in a hospital bed, the county school inspectorate confirmed . The episode underscored the pressure on 14- and 15-year-olds as the national assessment got under way.
Across Europe, high-stakes exit exams also made headlines. In Germany’s Hesse region, Alexander Jorias achieved the rare feat of 900 points out of 900 in the *Abitur*, though he described himself as a classroom “troublemaker” in earlier years . Meanwhile, Spain’s Basque Country reduced the number of automatic zeros for Castilian-speaking students in the *euskera* exam from 76 to 11 after rector Bengoetxea acknowledged examiners could identify pupils’ schools .
Back in Romania, the Education Ministry has yet to address whether the technical failures will prompt procedural changes for Tuesday’s mathematics test. Unions have called for an immediate inquiry into the digital platform’s stability and staffing.
- 3
- 3
- 1
- 1
- 1
- 1
- 1



