The ingredients of public school achievement. “The kids think they're going to lose a lot of motivation”

Thousands of children continue to participate in the Olympics and school competitions, although the cut in the scholarship budget has disappointed many. Performance is achieved with a lot of individual study, additional training with the teacher, sometimes expensive materials. For students in technological high schools, the efforts are even greater.

600 students and teachers were awarded in Olt PHOTO: Alina Mitran

Approximately 600 students and 190 teachers from Olt county were awarded, on Wednesday, February 25, 2026, in Slatina, for the results obtained in the 2024-2025 school year. This year the Olt County Council allocated over 185,000 lei for the awarding of students and teachers, prizes being offered for students qualified at the national stages of the school Olympics, those with national medals, and the largest amounts were reserved for students with international awards.

The monetary prizes, although they are not fabulous (with the exception of the prize of 6,000 lei, given to the student Eduard Ștefan for the gold medals obtained last year at two international competitions, the prizes for the distinctions obtained at the national competitions were between 200 and 1,000 lei), represent for children and young people a motivation, along with the recognition of their merits. However, most of them talk about the fact that the suspension of the excellence scholarships (winners of national awards were betting on scholarships between 700 and 1,000 lei, and for international awards – 3,000 lei per month), which were an important help offered monthly, left its mark. Teachers note that it is getting harder and harder to convince them to participate in the Olympics, and students talk about the costs of performance, borne out of the parents' pocket.

The teacher of the “little genius” from Caracal: “Children should never be stopped”

The best result obtained in Olt County in the 2024-2025 school year was that of Eduard Ștefan, a student in the 4th grade at “Nicolae Titulescu” Caracal Secondary School. Edy won the gold medal at the Copernicus International Mathematical Olympiad and two other medals at international competitions, being called “the little genius”.

His teacher, Mihaela Ruță, says that Edy is a particularly curious student. It wasn't easy driving him to the performance, but it was enjoyable. “It was a real challenge that every day I had to come prepared for him with something different from what I prepared for the children in the class, and he in turn came with the same questions that I had to answer. Sometimes I had to document myself, because he is a child who is really passionate about mathematics, but not only. He is also interested in other sciences – astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry – and at his age I had to I offer some information accessible to his level of understanding”, said the teacher, for “Adevărul”.

Eduard Ștefan with teacher Mihaela Ruță PHOTO: Alina Mitran

Teachers should not be afraid to admit to students that they, in turn, need documentation, the teacher believes. “We can't know absolutely all the information. But every time this happened, I explained to him that I had to document myself so that I could give him the correct information. Children should never be stopped. Because they need information and they are appreciated if they are curious to find out this and that information. And then we search and find out the news that they need.”added Mihaela Ruță.

For children capable of performance, the teacher also said, school competitions were a good means of preparation. Currently, they are no longer allowed in the primary cycle, and the students miss them. “There are children who want to, no one forces them. And those who want to work harder, and we support them and help them to be better in the future. Once there are no more competitions, the children are somewhat limited at the level of the school curriculum. Well, if the teacher is interested in performing, even if there are no competitions, he can do this”said Mihaela Ruță.

The student admitted to Harvard: “If I had also done additional training, I would definitely have ended up with a much higher cost”

The fact that good results obtained in school competitions no longer bring students and monthly scholarships demotivates them, says student Aneline Cristina Gulie. He had the best result at the county level, last school year, at the “Solomon Marcus” National Linguistics Olympiad, qualifying for the national stage. The student, currently in the twelfth grade at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Theoretical High School in Corabia, was admitted to Harvard University.

He says that prize money is important to students because it makes them feel that their merits are recognized. “It basically shows us our gratitude towards the responsibility with which we dedicated ourselves to education, especially in the context in which we had the austerity measures that practically excluded excellence scholarships and thus, somehow, our merits from this point of view were not promoted as much as they should have been. The children will lose a lot of motivation, although really, for me at least, the motivation was to expand my universe of knowledge, to learn more about the world I'm in. And linguistics is a very broad field from which I was able to learn a lot.” said the student.

Although the prizes are not an end in themselves, they have the role of motivating the students to overcome their limits, adds the student, especially since the preparation for such a competition requires a lot of individual study, being elements that are not studied in class.

“I prepared quite a lot myself for the Olympics. I had the previous years topics and a certain guide that I purchased. The guide cost somewhere around 50-60-70 lei, it was not a very high cost, but it also depends on the level. If I had also done preparation, I would have definitely ended up with a much higher cost. So it depends from Olympiad to Olympiad”, Aneline Gulie also scored. As for her, she prepared by making use of the information she picked up from older colleagues who had participated in the same Olympiad in previous years.

As for the performance of being admitted to one of the most prestigious universities in the world, he says that the result at the Olympiad probably also mattered, but the admission process is much more complex.

“I think it did matter, but it's a holistic process where they look at everything from your extracurricular activities to your life story. It's not enough to have enough prizes, because they have to understand why. Universities in America, in the States, this is their goal, to understand why you did certain things, what your goals are and what you can bring as a student to the world around you, to the campus.” completed the student who received a full scholarship.

“It's a bigger effort for tech students to be award winners”

Among the 600 students who qualified for the national stage of the school olympiads, there are also 20 students from technological high schools in Olt who qualified for the technical olympiads. Five of them returned from the national stage with awards. Although the number may seem small, it is a feat for teachers in such high schools to even get them to participate. They are admitted to the high school with much lower averages than their colleagues in the theoretical high schools, and the place taken was not a choice, but often an accident generated by the computerized assignment. “It's a bigger effort for technology students to be prize-winners at the national level,” explained Prof. Ștefania Aliman, school inspector for technical subjects within the Olt County School Inspectorate. “I've always said that I admire them, because many of them are commuters, maybe they leave home at 6.30 to get to high school at 8.00, and if it rains, they get soaked to the skin and stay like that all day…”, Aliman added.

The preparation of students for the Olympiad is done after school hours, as it happens in the case of all disciplines, by the way. Sometimes teachers are conditioned by the schedule of means of transport, in the case of commuter students. The biggest challenge is to prepare a child with an increased interest in technical subjects, who also has skills (an important test is the practical), but who does not have all the necessary notions within other subjects. Often teachers do math or physics lessons first, because without such notions they cannot lead students to performance. “The moment I enter training with them, it's total dedication. (…) In high school, think that they have less knowledge of mathematics, but we, in electricity, or electronics, need to apply Kirchhoff's laws, or other laws of physics, then everything comes down to mathematical calculations”, Prof. Aliman also said.

Students from the theoretical school compete head-to-head with those from sports high schools on the field

The National School Sports Olympiad has the merit of highlighting students with sports talent. Those who return from the national stage with prizes are, for the most part, certified athletes and often students from sports high schools. However, theoretical high schools also “sneak” among the winners. “Mihai Viteazul” Theoretical High School in Caracal is such an example. In the last school year, the handball teams, both girls and boys, fought with those of sports high schools. They won at the county level, they also achieved good results in the zonal phase.

The teacher who achieved such a performance with his students – and there were years when they had very good results at the national level – is also the director of the high school. Beyond the sports performance, says the director, he is happy that they also have very good results in education. “At our high school, those who have good results in sports also do well in their studies. I have always followed their progress. The students with whom I obtained the first national place, some years ago, did not have an average below 9”explained Prof. Liviu Mitroi.

Olympians are awarded annually, but do not benefit from a performance scholarship PHOTO: Alina Mitran

Sports performance is largely due to the activity of the school sports club in which the students are active, the teacher admits, but additional hours of training at school are needed to weld the team, because not everyone plays in the same team, and Prof. Mitroi is not their club coach either.

The situation in handball is also repeated in the case of other sports, the students from “Mihai Viteazul”, among the best in education, constantly proving to be among the best athletes in the county. And for them the performance scholarship would have been motivating, the director also said.