The Government approved, on Wednesday 22 July, the «Restart in Education» reform, under which primary schools, gymnasiums, lyceums and special education institutions leave the subordination of the district councils and move to the state. In place of the district education departments, Territorial Agencies for Education are set up, subordinated to the Ministry of Education and Research. Kindergartens and extracurricular education remain with the local authorities.
This is not a law in force, but a draft that goes to Parliament. The calendar in the text is nonetheless detailed, and the first measure applies immediately after publication: the filling by competition of vacant public positions in the education departments is prohibited.
For Ungheni district, where the District Council is today the founder of the schools, through the Education Department headed by Violeta Gavriliuc, the reform shifts at once competences and money worth 72.5% of the district budget.
What leaves and what stays
The district has 46 primary and general secondary education institutions, with 11,061 pupils and 876 teaching staff, according to National Bureau of Statistics data for the 2025/26 school year. Two decades ago there were 65 institutions and 20,121 pupils — a fall of 29% in institutions and of 45% in pupils. The forecast cited in the reform Concept indicates a further 41% drop in the number of pupils by 2040.
All these institutions move, from 1 January 2027, to the Territorial Agency for Education. The District Council keeps early education and district-level extracurricular education.
One discrepancy is worth flagging: the list published by the Education Department contains 45 institutions, and the annex to the district budget likewise 45, while official statistics report 46. The difference is not explained in any of the sources. The published list also does not contain a special education institution, although the reform explicitly targets one.
What it means in money
The district budget for 2026 is 462.7 million lei, of which 426.9 million — that is 92.3% — are transfers from the state budget. Education means 377.2 million lei, that is 81.5% of the district’s entire budget.
The segment that actually leaves for the agency — primary, gymnasium and lyceum — amounts to 335.5 million lei. Set against the whole district budget, that is 72.5%. What remains stated with the council, early and extracurricular education, means 31.1 million.
There is, however, a nuance that changes how these figures read. The money for schools is not, for the most part, the district’s own resources: of the 385.1 million lei spent by the Ungheni District Council on education in 2025, 354.8 million came from special-purpose transfers from the state budget — that is 92.1%. The district’s own resources for education were 30.4 million lei.
The school buildings remain in the public property of the administrative-territorial unit and are handed to the agency free of charge, under loan for use. Movable assets — transport, equipment, fittings — pass into the ownership of the state.
The question the act does not answer: does Ungheni gain or lose?
The reform moves not only competences, but also financial flows. The draft amends the Law on local public finances: the share of personal income tax that forms the financial support fund of administrative-territorial units falls from 63.9% to 51.25%, and the parameter that splits this fund between the two levels of administration drops from 29.6% to 18.0%. The second is the channel through which the reform reaches district budgets.
The Ministry of Finance ran the simulations and recorded them in its opinion:
there is an impact at individual level for the district budgets, so that there are 14 winning district councils, the positive impact ranging from a minimum of 12.7 thousand lei (Dubăsari DC) to a maximum of 7 409.5 thousand lei (Strășeni DC). Losers from the reform in question are 18 district councils, the losses ranging from a minimum of 453.2 thousand lei (Cimișlia DC) to a maximum of 5 419.1 thousand lei (Florești DC). Ministry of Finance, opinion recorded in the synthesis of objections to the draft
Only the extremes are named. The full list of the 14 winners and 18 losers appears neither in the draft, nor in the explanatory note, nor in the Concept. Ungheni is not among the examples cited, so from the public documents it cannot be established which group it falls into. The ministry estimated that the total losses of the second level reach 44.9 million lei, which would be covered from the state budget through compensation transfers in 2027.
The same opinion of the Ministry of Finance also contains a specification concerning the future of these compensations: they would no longer be allocated in the following years, «in the context of the administrative-territorial reform after the general local elections of autumn 2027», together with the «move to 10 second-level ATUs starting from 2028».
From this follows a tension of architecture: up to 35 territorial agencies are being built on district catchments, at a moment when the finance ministry of the same government is projecting a reduction to 10 second-level administrative-territorial units.
What the minister says
Today, the quality of the education a child has access to depends very much on the capacity and involvement of the district councils, which are the founders of the schools. In some districts there are specialists, resources and support, while in others the schools have to cope more on their own. The place where a pupil was born must not decide their future, and state policies in the field of education must be implemented uniformly across the whole territory of the country. Dan Perciun, Minister of Education and Research
The argument has a measured counterpart in the reform documents themselves: the occupancy rate of public positions in Ungheni’s district education department is 50%, against a national average of 70.7%. At the same time, the district’s average at the 2025 baccalaureate was 7.41, the fourth in the country.
The ministry stated separately that the local authorities will still be able to allocate money for repairs, equipment and the development of the institutions in their community, even if they will no longer be their founders.
What was rejected and what was accepted
The synthesis annexed to the draft contains 155 positions. The Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova submitted two opinions, whose objections were rejected in full. The central argument:
The draft represents a centralisation of competences in the field of education and therefore does not fully satisfy the constitutional principle of the decentralisation of public services, enshrined in Art. 109 of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova. Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova, opinion recorded in the synthesis of objections
CALM also invoked the European Charter of Local Self-Government, ratified in 1997, and asked that the reform be correlated with the package of laws of the public administration reform, as well as for a separate impact analysis to be drawn up. The ministry replied that Article 109 «allows certain competences to be exercised at a higher level when the efficiency and coherence of public policies so require» and that the Concept stands in for an impact analysis.
The budgetary objection with the most direct relevance for Ungheni comes from Bălți City Hall, which showed that the money for the transferred institutions «merely transits» the local budget, being over 90% special-purpose transfers, so that taking it over produces no real savings — while the obligation for capital repairs remains with the local owner. The ministry classed these fears as «hypothetical risks, which do not concern the essence of the draft». On the substance, the ministry replied that the reduction reflects the transfer of responsibilities: along with the institutions, their costs also leave the local budget, so that the adjustment of revenues «is proportional and does not generate a negative budgetary impact». The reasoning is relevant for Ungheni too, where the share of special-purpose transfers in the district’s education spending is 92.1%, even if the financial mechanism that touches the districts differs from the one invoked by the municipalities.
The objections of the Alliance of Organisations for Persons with Disabilities were, by contrast, accepted. The Alliance asked for explicit competences of the agencies on inclusive education, dedicated funding for support services and assistive equipment, and national monitoring indicators. These are to be reflected in the framework regulation.
The Federation of Education and Science Trade Unions and the National Trade Union Confederation asked for extended consultations, an impact analysis before implementation, a phasing of the process and mechanisms to protect employees’ rights.
The synthesis of objections published by the ministry contains no observations submitted by the Ungheni District Council or by the Ungheni Education Department. Among the second-level authorities, Chișinău, Bălți and the Taraclia Education Department appear.
What happens to the people and the structures
The text is permissive, it does not guarantee: public servants from the education departments «may be employed, by transfer» in the vacant public positions of the agencies. Contractual employees whose activities become public positions may serve on an interim basis until 1 June 2027, with a competition afterwards. Agency directors are appointed by competition, for terms of five years, with a maximum of two terms; until the competitions are organised, the ministry designates interim heads.
The Ungheni Education Department has a staff ceiling of 107.5 positions — approved posts, not people in post; the occupancy rate of public positions in the department is 50% — but this also covers structures that, by the logic of the draft, remain with the District Council: the Sports School (24 positions), the House of Creation (10.5), the district Youth Centre (5) and the Codreanca camp (6). For two other structures — the school-route servicing service (20 positions) and the district Centre for Educational Assistance and Performance (5) — the affiliation is not settled in the draft: the delimitation is to be made through the framework regulation that follows.
Nor is the catchment settled. The press release speaks of 35 agencies, and the explanatory note of «a maximum of 35», but the Concept specifies that the exact number and the delimitation of the units assigned to each agency are approved by a Government decision, by 30 October 2026. The «administrative critical mass» criterion in the Concept requires avoiding structures that are too small, without real managerial capacity — which leaves open the possibility that some districts will be grouped together. Whether Ungheni district gets its own agency will be known on that date.
This article is based on the Government press release of 22 July 2026, on the full text of draft law 526/MEC/2026 and on the synthesis of the 155 consultation positions annexed to it, on the reform Concept published by the Ministry of Education and Research, on Ungheni District Council decision no. 8/2 of 9 December 2025 on the district budget for 2026, on National Bureau of Statistics data on the district’s school network and on the list of institutions published by the Ungheni Education Department. The shares of 81.5% and 72.5% of the district budget, as well as the 92.1% share of special-purpose transfers in the district’s education spending, belong to the newsroom and were calculated from the figures of the district budget and from the Ministry of Finance table included in the reform Concept. The full list of winning and losing district councils from the Ministry of Finance simulation is not published.