“Multilingual education” and the Romanian language in ATU Gagauzia, 2022–2025: some lessons and conclusions

Abstract

This article analyzes the results of a multilingual education pilot program implemented in ATU Gagauzia from 2022 to 2025. It demonstrates that, despite the successes achieved in recent years, significant challenges remain. Clear evidence of this is provided by data on the results of the Romanian language exams taken by 9th-grade graduates in ATU Gagauzia during the 2024–2025 school year. According to this data, for the subject “Romanian Language and Literature”, the average exam score was 6.19 points in allolingual schools and 6.05 in schools with Romanian as the language of instruction. As we can see, in schools with Romanian as the language of instruction, this figure is even slightly lower than in allolingual schools. Most importantly, this is a very low score – the lower limit of the “satisfactory” grade. And it should be emphasized that in this case, we are dealing with the results of graduates who grew up and received their education during the multilingual education experiment that has been in effect in ATU Gagauzia since 2015. There are, obviously, objective reasons for such results. As our analysis shows, they relate to both the micro-level (and are explained by differences in the quality of education across various educational institutions) and the macro-level – stemming from the overall situation in the region and even in the Republic of Moldova. These problems are, in all likelihood, clearly underestimated and even overlooked. And if attempts are made to force the development of multilingual education, we believe they will only grow and intensify.