Scoala Gimnaziala “Constantin Parfene”
Vaslui County is situated in the North-eastern region of the country, being recognized as an economically disadvantaged area, situation that affects the social, cultural and educational life of the population in Vaslui town.
Our school has 675 students, 6 to 15 years old, primary and lower secondary school, with very different social backgrounds, supervised by a highly qualified teaching staff (38 teachers). Most of our students come from deeply economically and socially disadvantaged families, with a very low standard of living: 16.7% come from families with unemployed parents, 13% have both parents working abroad, especially in Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Greece, 18.4% come from families with a minimum national income, 8.7% come from single-parent families, 2% are institutionalized children or in family placement, 3,8 % are minorities (Rroma), 13 students have special educational needs. On the other hand, we have talented students in different school subjects (13%) and more than 25% of our students have very good results. However, the “Constantin Parfene” Secondary School is recognized in community by the very good results of our students obtained at national exams, Olympiads, different competitions locally or nationally.
Nevertheless, the existence in our school environment as well as in community of so many problems regarding social and economic disadvantages, limited opportunities in personal development of students from vulnerable groups implicitly decreases their motivation for learning, the weak involvement of the poor families in the students’ education representing also a reality. Moreover, although many teachers are skilled in using active strategies of learning, our students consider more than 50% of lessons as less attractive and full of useless information.
In such an environment, characterized by a great diversity of needs, our school has taken a great part of the parents? responsibility, involving students in plenty of activities that contribute to the development of their personality, reducing the social inequalities. We have developed diverse educational programs, locally, nationally and internationally, to increase their motivation for studying, to find new ways to model their behaviour, to identify new approaches to improve the learning process.
The development of the students key competences, preparing them better for the next stages in life as well as the continuous improvement of the teachers? staff skills to adopt new methodological approaches to grow the quality of education, according to the new society requirements, are the main targets of our school policies.