11 the situation of three blind students discriminated against by the university. Following the intervention of the People's Advocate Institution, the University of Bucharest assumed and implemented 10 necessary measures in order to safeguard the visually impaired students against discrimination. According to the provisions of Art. 2 paragraph (10) of the Order of the Minister of National Education no. 4948/2019, in the process of admission to state high school education for the 2020-2021 school year, can participate only those students who have taken the national assessment examination and whose average grade of admission, calculated according to the annex no. 2 of the order indicated above, is at least 5.00 (five). The calculation is carried out as a weighted average between the general average at the national assessment taken by the eighth-grade graduates, which has a weight of 80%, and the general graduation average of the fifth and eighth grades, which has a weight of 20% in calculating the admission average. Thus, students who take the National Assessment in 2020 and who will have the average grade for high school admission below 5 will not enter the process of distribution to high schools (technological, theoretical or vocational). Following the steps taken, the Minister of Education finalized the draft order that will change the methodology of admission to high school and eliminated the obligation of the minimum average grade 5 for enrollment in the secondary education. Students will be admitted to high school if they have taken the National Assessment, regardless of the grade obtained. The draft order provides for the modification of Art. 2 paragraph (10), as follows: “Only the students who have taken the national assessment shall participate in the computerized distribution in the first stage of admission”, without making any indication related to the average grade. The rights of national minorities During the years 2018-2019, the People's Advocate, in fulfilling its constitutional role, noticed that the provisions of Art. 5 paragraph (4) from the Framework methodology regarding the organization of the admission in the cycles of undergraduate, master and doctoral studies, approved by the Order of the Minister of National Education and Scientific Research no. 6102/2016, create the premises for discrimination in terms of the certification of the linguistic skills upon admission to higher education, so that, through its specific methods of intervention, the People's Advocate requested the Ministry of National Education to modify the criticized provisions. The issue was successfully solved by amending Art. 5 paragraph (4) of the Framework methodology regarding the organization of the admission in the cycles of undergraduate, master and doctoral studies, approved by the Order of the Minister of Education and Research no. 5618/2019, published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, no. 5/7 January 2020, thus ensuring the unitary interpretation of the text of law, with a view to applying, by the higher education units, equal treatment between Romanian citizens, regardless of the form of education graduated, with respect to the certification of language skills for admission in higher education, in the sense of recognizing the linguistic skills in the Romanian language of the graduates of the Baccalaureate examination. The People's Advocate Institution has proceeded ex officio regarding the situation of the Association of the Blind Hungarians in Romania, which proposed to establish a special education institution in Hungarian language for blind children. Currently, in Romania there are 7 special institutions that provide education and training for the blind and all of them are teaching in Romanian. Following the intervention of the People's Advocate Institution, we were informed regarding the principle agreement of the Ministry of Education to support the local initiative to establish a special education institution in Hungarian for the visually impaired, according to the needs identified in the counties of Harghita and Covasna, followed by the adoption by the Ministry of National Education of the Minister's order, in accordance PEOPLE’S ADVOCATE ANNUAL REPORT 2019

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