Update, 17 June 2026 — The official list of vacancies, finalised on 5 June, counts 73 teaching posts in Ungheni district — the fifth-largest shortage in the country. The figures below — 88 posts, second place — were the ministry’s spring estimate. For the contest calendar and the breakdown by school, see 73 teaching posts stand empty in Ungheni’s schools.
On Wednesday, 17 June, the Ministry of Education and Research opens enrolment for the annual competition that places young people in teaching posts. For Ungheni, the stakes are among the highest in the country: the district enters the new school year with 88 unfilled teaching posts — the second-largest shortage in Moldova.
88 posts, second in the country
According to Ministry of Education data, for the 2026–2027 school year 88 teaching posts remain vacant in the Ungheni district. Only Chișinău has more unfilled posts (273); Ungheni shares second place with Comrat, followed by Cimișlia (85), Nisporeni (84) and Anenii Noi (65).
Nationally, the shortage is 1,365 posts — down from previous years (1,540 in 2025–2026 and 1,833 the year before). The most sought-after staff, across the country, remain primary-school teachers, kindergarten educators and Romanian-language teachers.
”We are not short of teachers — they are badly distributed”
The Minister of Education, Dan Perciun, summed up the problem on a television show in May: Moldova does not, on the whole, lack teachers — but it has a problem of geographical distribution. Staff concentrate in Chișinău and the large cities, while districts and villages remain uncovered. So the 88 posts in Ungheni do not necessarily mean that “there are no people,” but that too few choose to teach here.
What a young person who chooses Ungheni gets
To draw them towards the districts, the state has substantially increased the incentives. From 1 July 2026, a young specialist placed at a school in a rural area or a small town, outside Chișinău and Bălți, receives a one-time allowance of up to 375,000 lei if they teach a STEM subject — mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science — or the Romanian language in schools that teach in Russian. For other subjects the allowance is 275,000 lei, and in Chișinău and Bălți, 300,000. The money is paid in two instalments, six and eighteen months after employment.
To this are added, according to the government decision of May, a reduced teaching workload in the first five years, an annual allowance for teaching materials, help with rent and utilities in rural areas, extended leave and mentoring from an experienced colleague. All these benefits apply to those placed after 1 July 2026 — exactly when enrolment in the competition opens.
”Let’s teach in Ungheni!” and the idea of housing for teachers
Ungheni is no ordinary district in this equation. On 19 May, the Ministry of Education brought more than 100 future teachers into schools and kindergartens in the district, in a campaign with its own name — “Hai să predăm la Ungheni!” (“Let’s teach in Ungheni!”) — organised together with Ungheni city hall, the District Council and the Ungheni Education Directorate.
It was also Ungheni that the minister named when he spoke about one of the biggest obstacles for young teachers: housing. On a May show, Dan Perciun said that a social-housing project for young specialists “possibly from next year” would be piloted, including in the Ungheni district. For now it is a stated intention, not a budgeted decision.
How the competition works
The teaching-placement competition is aimed at young people up to 35 years old, graduates with teacher training, who are assigned to the vacant posts across the country. Enrolment is done online, through a form on the Ministry of Education’s website, and opens in July. The exact calendar, the form and the list of posts by institution are due to be announced precisely at Wednesday’s press conference.
The breakdown of Ungheni’s 88 posts by subject and by school is not yet public — it appears in the competition’s annex, together with the official launch on Wednesday. Triunghi.md will return with the concrete details for the people of Ungheni after the Ministry of Education’s conference.