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• Criteria determining school choice among the ethnic minority high school students

  17-25

  Imre Tódor

  Views:

  311

  In our paper we sought for the answer to the question: based on which motives do students from various types of high schools (in our case, denominational or non- denominational school) make their choice of educational institution? The target group of our research consists of the 9th and 11th grade students of Harghita County’s denominational (Roman Catholic, Reformed, Unitarian) schools and the non-denominational ones added to them. All in all, eight high schools got into our sample. We conducted a survey by questionnaire, the sample including 1,064 people. We analyzed the decision criteria formed based on motives behind the decision (primary and secondary effects) on the one hand, and followed the decision making process on the other. The non-denominational sector is often chosen by the elite- and institution-oriented student group, who has great expectations of the institution, e.g. - top of the line standards of education, outstanding achievement indicators, prestige of the institution, local reputation. According to the clusters created from the motives, the value- and community-oriented student group, as well as the one following the orientation of the peer group, can be found in significantly higher proportion in denominational schools.

• Emerging successes and persistent challenges in Hungarian minority education in Romania

  48–60

  Imre Tódor

  Views:

  57

  This study examines the early impacts of recent curriculum and examination reforms in Romanian minority education, focusing on the introduction of the “Romanian as a non-native language” curriculum for Hungarian-speaking students. Using aggregated national assessment and baccalaureate data from 2020–2025, the research analyzes trends in Romanian language performance among minority students, compares results across regions and school types, and uses mathematics performance as a comparative indicator to contextualize language-specific achievement patterns. Descriptive, cohort-comparative, and proportion-difference analyses, complemented by hypothetical “what-if” calculations, reveal that while a persistent 1.3–1.5 point gap remains between minority and majority students in Romanian language performance at the 8th-grade level, mathematics scores are nearly equivalent, indicating that the gap is linguistic rather than cognitive. In the 2025 baccalaureate – the first year of full curriculum implementation – pass rates improved notably in high-minority regions (e.g., Harghita +5.3 pp, Covasna +1.6 pp), alongside a significant reduction in failure rates, particularly in vocational and technical schools. The findings suggest that aligning examination content with a differentiated curriculum may be associated with more favorable educational outcomes among minority students, though effectiveness varies by region and school type. Sustainable gains require targeted teacher training, adequate resources, and systematic monitoring to address persistent structural and contextual disparities.

• The Impact of Secondary School Students’ Perceived Parenting Values on School Choice

  37-43.

  Imre Tódor

  Views:

  242

  The target group of our quantitative research is comprised of secondary school students from Szeklerland (Romania). A multistage sampling was used: in the first stage students from all denominational schools were included, then students from the assigned non-denominational schools, while in the second stage we included students from the 9th and 11th grades (N=1927). A questionnaire was used as a data collection instrument. We were interested to find out which educational sector boasted most prominently the dimensions of autonomy and conformity values and whether they correlate with the decision-making process regarding the choice of school type.