Hungarian pupils severely discriminated at the English language contest in Romania

In the past few weeks Hungarian teachers and educational experts alike have been outraged over a recently modified regulation, which states that starting this year the English language contest organized by the Ministry of Education will also test translation competences.

The regulation specifies that texts in English can be translated exclusively to and from Romanian. This is unconstitutional, as well as extremely discriminatory towards pupils belonging to national minorities, whose mother tongue is not Romanian.

This means that these students will face the added difficulty of having to translate English into another language and vice versa, none of which is their mother tongue.

This is not the first time that Hungarian pupils have been discriminated at a contest. The subjects at a 2015 contest were unintelligible, due to faulty translation.

The Covasna County School Inspectorate had previously asked for this regulation to be modified, on grounds that it violates the basic right and principle of equality before the law. However, the Ministry of Education refused to solve the matter, arguing that the national English contest is designed for students with a”knowledge above average”. This argumentation nonetheless ignores the fact that the English language contest is supposed to test the pupils’ knowledge of English, not their knowledge of the state language – for which there are separate contests -, and secondly, such a modification clearly puts students belonging to national minorities at a disadvantage compared to their Romanian colleagues.

Mikó Imre Minority Rights Legal Aid Service has submitted a complaint regarding this injustice to the National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD). They believe that in the 21st century discrimination is unacceptable under any circumstances, and it is especially worrisome that starting from an early age children must face discriminatory treatment and the adverse consequences of belonging to a national minority.

Source: Mikó Imre Minority Rights Legal Aid Service