On Friday, the Ungheni District Council held the first edition of its «Ungheni — Where Excellence Inspires» gala and honoured on stage ten students who finished all of this session’s national exams with the top mark. Each received a Diploma of Excellence, a cash prize and flowers. They are six high-school graduates and four from lower secondary — all from the Ungheni district.
The ceremony took place on the very day the Ministry of Education published the final Baccalaureate results. And those results change a figure we reported a week and a half ago as preliminary.
Six, not four — and no longer «all girls»
On the 25 June preliminary results, the town of Ungheni was listed with four female graduates scoring a mark of 10 at the Baccalaureate. Back then, they were four girls. After the appeals, the picture widened: according to the list read out by the District Council at the gala, Ungheni now has six students with straight 10s at the Baccalaureate.
The local rise tracks the national one. Across the country, the number of mark-10 results climbed after the appeals review from 85 to 114, according to the Ministry of Education and Research, while the final pass rate stood at 76.81%. The two graduates added in Ungheni come from the same high school that was already leading the pack, «Vasile Alecsandri» High School, which thus went from two to four top results.
One detail worth correcting outright: «four Ungheni girls» no longer describes the final reality — among the six there is now also a boy, Nichita Țurea, alongside a new graduate, Alexandrina Rîsîpanu.
A caveat is nonetheless in order. The figure of six is the one announced by the organiser, the District Council. The Ministry published, at the high-school level, only the preliminary table (town of Ungheni — four); a final breakdown by institution has not yet appeared, and the nominal list of the quality-assurance agency had not been published at the time of writing. The names and schools below therefore come from the District Council and the Education Directorate.
The ten honourees
High-school level (Baccalaureate), a mark of 10 in every exam:
- Ionela Lefter — «Vasile Alecsandri» High School
- Andreea Mușet — «Alexandr Pușkin» High School
- Doina Prepeliță — «Ion Creangă» High School
- Alexandrina Rîsîpanu — «Vasile Alecsandri» High School
- Anastasia Rusu — «Vasile Alecsandri» High School
- Nichita Țurea — «Vasile Alecsandri» High School
Lower-secondary level (9th grade), a mark of 10 in every exam:
- Cătălina Bejenari — «Mihai Eminescu» High School
- Dorina Bejenari — «Mihai Eminescu» High School
- Cătălin-Ștefan Goian — «Vasile Alecsandri» High School
- Olga Toloacă — «Andrei Chivriga» Gymnasium, Valea Mare
Nine of the ten honourees are from the town — a sign that the «nursery» of top marks remains concentrated in the district seat, with «Vasile Alecsandri» in the lead (five of the ten names). The single rural exception is at lower-secondary level: Olga Toloacă, from the «Andrei Chivriga» Gymnasium in Valea Mare.
What straight 10s actually mean
Straight 10s is not a high average but the absence of any mark below 10. At the Baccalaureate it means the top mark in each exam sat; at lower secondary — in all three exams for students from Romanian-language schools (History of Romanians and universal history, Mathematics, and Romanian language and literature). For minority-language classes, one more exam is added. We gave the full explanation of the exam in our article on the preliminary results.
This is not a one-year feat. In 2025 too, the Ungheni district had six graduates with a mark of 10 at the Baccalaureate, according to the agency’s nominal list. The peak of the Ungheni school’s excellence is thus confirmed for a second year running.
A new gala, against the backdrop of a school short of teachers
Friday’s event is, in itself, a novelty: the first gala of its kind in the district, an attempt by the local authority to turn the individual results of a few students into a public moment of recognition. The honourees were congratulated by district president Dionisie Ternovschi, by the head of the Ungheni Territorial Office of the State Chancellery, Ion Poia, and by the head of the Education Directorate, Violeta Gavriliuc.
The results of these young people are proof of the quality of education in the Ungheni district and a worthy example for the whole community.
Ungheni District Council, message from the ceremony
The news of ten final marks of 10 is good without reservation — which is exactly why it deserves to be read against its backdrop. The same school years that produce top results unfold in a district whose education system enters the new year with dozens of unfilled teaching posts: Ungheni was among the districts with the largest teacher shortage in the country. And academic excellence happens in a town from which, year after year, young people leave after high school — for university, for work, across the Prut.
So, beyond diplomas, flowers and cash prizes, the question remains the same as with every honoured cohort: how many of these ten will, a few years from now, come back home.
The national number of mark-10 results (85 preliminary, 114 final) and the pass rate come from the statements of the Ministry of Education and Research. The figure of four graduates for the town of Ungheni is from the Ministry’s preliminary table by high school (25 June); the figure of six, as well as the names and schools of the ten honourees, are those announced by the Ungheni District Council at the 3 July gala. A final nominal list from the quality-assurance agency had not been published at the time of writing. The context for 2025 (six graduates with a mark of 10 in the district) comes from the agency’s list from last year.