Education is a priority in Romanian policy and preventing early leaving from education and training and rising education quality are streamlined in the education policy. The general responsibilities for the education policies is coordinated at the national level by the Ministry of Education , at the regional level the policies being implemented by the Counties’ School Inspectorates. Through its sub-ordinated units, the Ministry of Education ensures the quality in education, supports student mobility schemes, and responds to the identified needs of pupils and students for counselling and educational support services. While a wide range of policies (under the Educated Romania project, initiated by the Romanian President and taken over by the Ministry of Education in 2021) are aimed to ensure the access to education of all pupils and students, a large number of young people are still facing barriers in education. The national coordination is made difficult by the lack of strong monitoring and evaluation working mechanisms in education policies’ field. But lacking the action plans and missing the budget allocations, all the set measures are still under development.

The early school leaving is defined as the percentage of people aged 18-24 who have only lower secondary education or less and are no longer in education or training. Over 15% of the Romanian young people are in this situation, Romania being the EU Country with the highest rate of early school leaving. The country target is set to reduce ELET to 11.3% by 2020 but the target was not reached.

There are very few policy measures supporting the development of non-formal education. While specially licensed evaluation providers can validate competences acquired through non-formal education, the system is fairly difficult and bureaucratic.