On 30 July, the Ministry of Education and Research and the National Agency for Curriculum and Evaluation published the ranking of education institutions by the final results of this year’s baccalaureate. There are 312 theoretical lyceums on the list, with all their figures: how many candidates each had, how many passed, how many failed, what average they obtained at the exam.
In 7th place is the „Vasile Alecsandri” Theoretical Lyceum in Ungheni: 76 candidates, 76 who passed, none failed, exam average 8,81. It is the second time in a row that the lyceum holds exactly the same position — in 2025 it was 7th as well, with an average of 8,62.
Among the top ten institutions in the country, the other nine are from Chișinău. „Vasile Alecsandri” is the only one from outside the capital.
How the ranking actually reads
The list is not ordered by average. It is ordered first by pass rate, and the exam average separates the institutions with the same rate.
The difference is not theoretical. The „Elada” Theoretical Lyceum in Măcărești obtained an average of 7,22 and is at position 87. The „Gheorghe Asachi” Theoretical Lyceum in Ungheni obtained an average of 7,85 — 0,63 higher — and is at position 158. The reason: „Elada” passed all 17 of its candidates, while „Gheorghe Asachi” had a single failure out of 41.
One failed candidate costs more, in the ranking, than a tenth of a point of average.
The raion’s eight lyceums
Ungheni raion has exactly eight theoretical lyceums. In Cornești, Costuleni, Todirești, Mănoilești and Petrești there is none.
| Lyceum | Position | Candidates | Passed | Failed | Pass rate | Exam average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| „Vasile Alecsandri”, Ungheni | 7 | 76 | 76 | 0 | 100% | 8,81 |
| „Elada”, Măcărești | 87 | 17 | 17 | 0 | 100% | 7,22 |
| „Alexandr Pușkin”, Ungheni | 115 | 49 | 49 | 0 | 100% | 6,84 |
| „Gheorghe Asachi”, Ungheni | 158 | 41 | 40 | 1 | 97,56% | 7,85 |
| „Ion Creangă”, Ungheni | 159 | 41 | 40 | 1 | 97,56% | 7,10 |
| Sculeni | 180 | 26 | 25 | 1 | 96,15% | 7,17 |
| „Alexei Mateevici”, Pîrlița | 193 | 22 | 21 | 1 | 95,45% | 6,59 |
| „Mihai Eminescu”, Ungheni | 242 | 70 | 64 | 6 | 91,42% | 7,55 |
Six improved their average. Three fell in the ranking
Compared with last year’s results, six of the raion’s eight lyceums obtained better averages at the exam. Declines occurred only at „Alexandr Pușkin” (from 7,04 to 6,84) and at „Alexei Mateevici” in Pîrlița (from 6,76 to 6,59).
And yet three lyceums fell in the ranking — one of them, a long way.
The „Mihai Eminescu” Lyceum in Ungheni lost 182 places, from position 60 to 242. Its exam average went up, from 7,44 to 7,55. What changed is the number of failures: last year the lyceum had passed all its candidates, this year six out of 70 did not pass the exam, and the rate fell to 91,42%.
„Gheorghe Asachi” recorded the largest rise in average in the raion, plus 0,43 — from 7,42 to 7,85 — and fell 96 places, from 62 to 158: a single non-pass was enough, because the list is ordered first by pass rate.
The Sculeni lyceum fell 80 places, from 100 to 180, also with a rising average — from 6,93 to 7,17 — and also with a single non-pass out of 26.
In the opposite direction, „Elada” in Măcărești climbed 101 places, from 188 to 87: its average rose by 0,27, and its pass rate reached 100%.
The raion as a whole
The figures above are per institution. For the raion as a whole, we calculated each lyceum’s exam average weighted by its number of candidates — the same for all 312 lyceums in the country, so that the figures are comparable.
The result: the average of Ungheni raion rose from 7,404 in 2025 to 7,603 in 2026, and the national average calculated identically — from 7,311 to 7,448. Ungheni therefore stands above the country average in both years, with a lead that has widened from 0,09 to 0,16 points.
The figure for 2025 can be set against an official one: the concept paper of the „Restart în educație” reform, a Ministry of Education document, gives Ungheni raion an average of 7,41 at the 2025 baccalaureate and places it fourth in the country. The calculation above gives 7,404 — practically the same value, arrived at independently, from the public ranking.
The raion’s pass rate, however, went in the opposite direction: from 98,55% to 97,08%, that is ten failed candidates out of 342, compared with five out of 346 last year.
The two figures say different things about the same graduating class: the students who passed the exam passed it better than last year, but twice as many did not pass it at all.
The colleges
College graduates sit the same exam, but they appear in a separate ranking, of 47 institutions. The comparison with the lyceums is not made directly: colleges train for a trade, and their diploma opens access to the labour market without the baccalaureate — as a rule, only those who want to go on to university sit the exam. The group is therefore much smaller and differently composed than a lyceum graduating class.
The Ungheni College of Medicine is at position 21: out of 39 candidates who sat the exam, 25 passed, a rate of 64,1%, average 6,88. The Ungheni Agro-Industrial College is at position 39: out of 20 candidates, 7 passed, a rate of 35%, average 6,78.
What the national figures say
At country level, the final pass rate of the 2026 baccalaureate was 81,9% after the supplementary session, compared with 79,17% in 2025. At theoretical lyceums, the rate was 96,11%.
The document also shows something relevant for a raion outside the capital: 33 lyceums in the country had at the same time a 100% pass rate and an average of at least 8. Of them, only seven are from outside Chișinău — Ungheni, Hîncești, Bălți, Strășeni, Giurgiulești, Ialoveni and Comrat. Last year, when such lyceums numbered 23 in all, only three were outside the capital — and Ungheni was already one of them.
The size of the gap remains visible, nonetheless, in the basic figure: out of the country’s 312 lyceums, 106 are in Chișinău, and they provided 5.654 of the 12.438 candidates.
The last ranking of a network that is changing
The results of this session describe a school network that, in a few months, will no longer be administered in the same way. From 1 January 2027, the raion’s 46 education institutions move to a Territorial Agency for Education, and the Ungheni Education Directorate is dissolved. The „Restart în educație” reform was approved by the Government on 22 July and voted by Parliament in first reading on 30 July.
The same schools enter the new year with 73 vacant teaching posts put out to competition — the fifth-largest teacher shortage in the country.
All per-institution figures come from the rankings published by the National Agency for Curriculum and Evaluation together with the Ministry of Education and Research, for the 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 sessions. The rows of the ranking also include the candidates in external-examination status registered at each institution. The „exam average” is the average of the marks obtained at the baccalaureate papers and differs from the lyceum-years average, listed separately in the document. The weighted raion and national averages are the newsroom’s own calculation, not figures published by the ministry. The breakdown of results by subject and by profile is not published in the ranking; the ministry has announced it for the „Report on the national assessments 2026”.