EDUCATED ROMANIA Accusations of fraud at the national music olympiad, the practical test: “Why do children still work 5,000 hours?”

New allegations are emerging about the national stage of the high school music olympiad. The mother of a 10th grade student from Târgoviște, who played the clarinet, says that a child from the same school as her son participated with a repertoire that contravenes the regulations. And the first two places of the section, for the 10th grade, were won by students from the same high school where one of the teachers on the jury teaches.

• Almost 400 students from all over the country competed.
• Such perceived injustices, an artist claims, end up demobilizing students who work enormously. “To make an average, we are talking about 5,000 hours of study during the high school years. Why become a slave to a tool in a society where culture is ignored?”.

“What is the point of the regulation?”, summarizes Alina Ilie, a mother from Târgoviște, the process of submitting a memorandum to the Ministry of Education in the case of the national high school music olympiad. There were also problems with the music theory test, according to Edupedu. Several exercises were removed from the test because the topics were not in the syllabus, so the points were redistributed. And the turmoil and accusations continued during the practical test, claims Alina Ilie.

Academic and financial reward

“It has nothing to do with my child’s score, but with the irregularities”, says Alina Ilie, in a dialogue with HotNews.

In the memo she sent to the Ministry of Education, the woman complains that the prizes were awarded subjectively in the wind instruments – clarinet section. The memoir concerns the practical part of the Olympics, where her son, a student in the 10th grade at the “Bălașa Doamna” Arts High School in Târgoviște, also competed.

The memo alleges that the first and second places were won by two students from the “Sigismund Toduță” College of Music in Cluj, under the conditions that one of the evaluating teachers from the clarinet subcommittee teaches at “Sigismund Toduță”.

Regarding the third place, the rules of the Olympiad were simply violated twice, claims Alina Ilie, because the student sang a different repertoire than the one provided. “Let’s not forget that the stakes of such a competition are high: financial reward, i.e. scholarship, guaranteed place at any Conservatory in the country,” added the mother.

The value of the II Olympic Excellence Scholarship is 700 lei – this is how much the winners of I, II and III places at the national Olympiads receive monthly throughout the following school year.

Contacted by HotNews, both the school and the Olympiad organizers reject the parent’s criticism.

Two romantic composers

The national stage of the high school music olympiad took place between April 17-21, in Craiova, and almost 400 students from all over the country competed.

The Olympiad was held in three sections: instrumental, vocal and theoretical studies. A student could compete in only one section, not several, according to the rules.

In the practical test, regardless of the instrument, students must play works that differ in style, genre and period. For example, in clarinet, in the 10th grade, the students had to play a concerto of their choice, as well as another work of their choice, but different in genre, style and form from the instrumental concerto.

The first problem that Alina Ilie noticed, she tells HotNews, was that, at the school stage, one of the competing students from the “Bălașa Doamna” Arts High School in Târgoviște, a colleague in the same class as her son, played two songs from the same romantic period.

They are Luigi Bassi’s Rigolleto Fantasy and Carl Maria Von Weber’s Concerto No. 1, Part I, she elaborates. Both composers come from the romantic period of music, an instrumental artist from a national philharmonic, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed to HotNews.

Marian Dobrescu, director of “Bălașa Doamna”: “It’s a very fine line”

“The regulation is very clear: they have to play two pieces in different styles and periods. He could sing something from the romantic period and something from the modern period, for example. So here it was violated from the start. They said “it goes that way” and they went that way”, said the artist, in the discussion with HotNews.

Failure to comply with the regulation will result in disqualification. “But he still went to the national Olympics”, says Alina Ilie. The woman believes that the fact that the student’s father is a teacher in the same high school, at “Bălașa Doamna”, had something to do with sending the child to the next stage of the competition.

“The regulation says that at the national stage they must perform the same pieces as at the school stage. So he violated the regulation twice”, says Alina Ilie. The student ultimately scored 93 points, which qualified him for third prize in the clarinet section, according to public results.

Contacted by HotNews, Marian Dobrescu, director of the “Bălașa Doamna” Arts High School, said that there is “a very fine line” between the two composers whose pieces were performed by the student. After the school stage of the Olympiad, after the first complaints about the student’s repertoire appeared, “we also checked through the high school committee. And I also consulted specialists from the university environment”.

“It is not clear if the pieces are from the same period. One of the composers is close at the moment with the other composer, but it is not a clear line”, Marian Dobrescu told Hotnews.

“If a student has a teacher in the same school as him, it would mean that the child can never participate in any Olympics again. We cannot deny the child the right to participate in the Olympics. The father had no involvement, he was not in any commission, he has a different specialization than the child”, added the director of the high school.

podium

Another problem, claims Alina Ilie, is that the jury of the clarinet section included a professor from a music college in Cluj. Two students from the same college as the teacher were also enrolled here. “And they won first and second prizes.”

The woman refers to professor Adrian Cesa-Goje, from the “Sigismund Toduță” College of Music in Cluj, as it appears from the Olympiad brochure.

The jury of the clarinet section included Cesa-Goje, Cosmin Teodor Hărșian, the vice-president of the subcommittee, from the West University of Timișoara, Andrei Ciprian Melente from the “Dinu Lipatti” National College of Arts in Bucharest, Florin Loghin from the National College of Art “Octav Băncilă” from Iasi and Sorin Stoian, subcommittee secretary, from “Marin Sorescu” Arts High School in Craiova.

The two 10th graders from “Sigismund Toduță” won first and second place in the clarinet section. From the same college, also in clarinet, two other 11th grade students won the II and III prizes.

An artist: “To make an average, we are talking about 5,000 hours of study during the high school years”

“In this field, everybody knows everybody. How do you explain this injustice to a child?” says the mother. “It’s a major physical effort, you can’t even imagine. These children have a deformed thumb from the way they hold the musical instrument, they have a bone knot, they have bloody wounds. They have sores on their lips from playing the clarinet and they sit with ice in their mouths to start over the next day,” she continues.

“Something like this has been happening for years,” says the instrumental artist consulted by HotNews. With over 30 years of experience in orchestral music, the artist states that at such competitions “nepotism is always used”. He gives the example of his son, a high school student, who participated in the music olympiad in previous years, but did not take the podium.

He is aware that he can be subjective, as a parent, but the fact that the first places were won by students from a high school taught by one of the teachers on the jury raised questions. “My son is not going to the Olympics because of this. He didn’t want it anymore,” says the artist.

It also speaks to how many thousands of hours of work are behind a single 30-40 minute moment of singing at the Olympics. Do the math: at an average of two hours of study per day, without weekends, that means 40 hours of work per month. As an adult. And he has been doing this since he was 6 years old, theory and practice. “To make an average, we are talking about 5,000 hours of study in the high school years. Then, the Conservatory follows”, he explains.

“Why become a slave to a tool in a society where culture is ignored?”

“When they see things like this happening, students become discouraged and many of them resign in disappointment or give up in favor of jobs that provide them with a decent living. Why become a slave to an instrument all your life in a society where culture is almost completely ignored and education tends to borderline illiteracy?”, continues the artist.

Contacted by HotNews, Lăcrămioara Pauliuc, the executive president of the Olympics, did not want to comment on the situation at the competition.

“There was a commission there that evaluated, the commission must give its opinion. I don’t understand why you’re calling me. Everyone is responsible for what they do,” said Pauliuc.

Accusations of irregularities in the theory test as well

Problems were also complained of by teachers in the music theory section, where the correction scales contained fewer exercises than the students had to solve, Edupedu wrote on Friday, April 19.

Specifically, the students had to solve nine exercises on the exam paper, but the scales contained seven or eight, depending on the class: in the 9th, for example, there were eight, in the 11th, seven, according to the photos published by Edupedu.

Professor Lăcrămioara Pauliuc told the education publication that initially, the competition topics contained elements outside the Olympiad program. Although they were from the school curriculum, there were chances that the students had only prepared from the competition syllabus, which was no longer updated.

“To make it fair for everyone, I said that we should redistribute those points”, explained Pauliuc, a teacher at the “Dinu Lipatti” National College of Arts in Bucharest, for Edupedu.

Basically, certain subjects were no longer scored, and the points from these subjects were redistributed. Thus, one exercise ended up having two points instead of 10, and another, 24 instead of 10. Pauliuc also said that the error appeared after the teachers were the subjects, right before the test, and gave them students, but without checking the subjects.

It is not the first year that there have been complaints about the organization of the music olympiad. In 2023, at the Bucharest stage, a teacher was an evaluator at the Olympics, although his son was enrolled in the competition, which is completely prohibited by the regulations.

The case was presented at length by Edupedu, who showed that the Bucharest School Inspectorate knew about the situation, because it had received several complaints from the participating teachers, but told them that it was not the institution’s business. A similar episode was also in Caraș-Severin, with an evaluator teacher from Arad with his grandson competing in the regional phase.