Schools to come under Ministry of Education and Research and be managed by Territorial Education Agencies: reform approved by Parliament in second reading

Territorial Education Agencies (TEAs) will be established in the Republic of Moldova to replace the current education departments and manage the country’s schools. The change is part of a wide-ranging reform initiated by the Ministry of Education and Research (MEC) under Restart in Education initiative, aimed at ensuring access to quality education for all children in the country by creating a unified management system for general education. The bill providing for the establishment of the new agencies was approved by Parliament today in its second reading, with the votes of 53 lawmakers.

The new agencies will operate under the authority of the MEC and will administer the school network. They will become the founders of primary schools, lower secondary schools, high schools and special education institutions. Kindergartens and extracurricular institutions will remain under the administration of local public authorities.

The TEAs will manage the financing of institutions, approve the number of classes and staffing structures, establish school districts and monitor compliance with compulsory schooling. They will also intervene in the management of infrastructure and budgets, the fight against absenteeism and bullying, as well as support for children with special educational needs.

Liliana Nicolaescu-Onofrei, chair of the parliamentary Committee on Culture, Education, Research, Youth, Sports and Mass Media, said during the parliamentary session that the purpose of the bill is to reorganize the system for administering general education by creating integrated territorial structures capable of uniformly coordinating the activities of educational institutions, optimizing the management of allocated funds and creating conditions for the provision of accessible, high-quality educational services.


“The new regulations also seek to align national legislation with the directions established by the Education 2030 Development Strategy and the public policy concept ‘Restart in Education,’ as well as with European practices regarding the organization and coordination of public services,” Liliana Nicolaescu-Onofrei noted.


According to the authorities, for students and parents, the reform will ensure faster interventions and more effective support services, while teachers and school principals will gain access to specialists and resources that many schools currently lack.

The explanatory note to the bill states that the new agencies are expected to ensure the effective and uniform implementation of education policies, reduce territorial disparities, strategically develop the school network and efficiently use public resources in the interest of education quality.

After schools are transferred to the TEAs, they will receive direct funding from the state budget, calculated based on the standard cost per student, compared with the current situation in which educational institutions are funded through local budgets. The Territorial Education Agencies will continue to finance extended-day group activities and art- or sports-focused classes for primary and lower secondary educational institutions that offered these programs during the 2025–2026 academic year.

The agencies will be headed by directors selected through a competitive process and appointed to a public office for a five-year term. The position of TEA head may be held by the same person for no more than two terms, consecutive or otherwise. Employees of the current district and municipal education departments may be transferred to vacant positions within the new agencies. In addition, a proposal from the Popular Assembly of the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia was accepted, providing that the director of the TEA in Gagauzia be appointed by a decision of the Popular Assembly.

The transfer of educational institutions under the authority of the MEC through the creation of Territorial Education Agencies, along with the implementation of the new funding mechanism, is planned for January 1, 2027. At the same time, the MEC proposed that, for institutions in the municipalities of Chișinău and Bălți, as well as in the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, the deadlines for the new rules to enter into force be postponed by one year, until January 1, 2028. According to the MEC, this is necessary to allow the structures to be adjusted gradually and to avoid disrupting the activities of educational institutions.