Romania has seen a growing interest in robotics competitions. First Tech Challenge Romania is the largest robotics competition in secondary schools in the country since 2016/17, including vocational education and training. It is organised by the Nation Through Education Association. Over 13 000 students and 2 000 teachers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and entrepreneurship education have participated in the competition. The rules are approved by the education ministry.
The competition helps students and teachers master STEM and life skills and apply ‘gracious professionalism’ and ‘cooperation’ principles by sharing resources with competitors or even helping them. They learn coding, project management, communication, coordination, cooperation, teamwork, critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills. They also practise designing, building, programming and operating a robot.
The first competition in 2016/17 brought together around 800 students from 33 cities in Romania. This year, 173 teams of 10-15 students from one-fifth of all schools and colleges participated. The three best teams received an invitation to compete at the World Championship. In 2022, the Delta Force team from the National College of Informatics in Arad became the first non-US team to win the world champion title. In 2023, four Romanian teams from Mihai Viteazu National College (Ploiești), Grigore Moisil Informatic Highschool (Iași), Zinca Golescu National College (Pitești) and Nicolae Bălcescu Technologic Highschool (Bucharest) won top three places in different nominations.
Given the high interest in robotics and innovation through robotics, the Ministry of Education with the support of the Banca Comercială Română initiated Nextlab.tech, a national robotics competition addressed at learners aged 8 to 16. Around 500 of them received robotics kits as a prize for participating in the first phase of the 2023 competition round.
Raising interest in coding is shared by the Romanian teaching and learning community from schools which have the opportunity to participate regularly in EU Code Week events. They promote sharing information and inspiration, and teach people to code, do robotics, tinker with hardware, 3D-print, etc. In 2023, Romania ranked 5th in the top 10 countries with more than 1 000 participants.
A combination of STEM and digital skills is valuable for the labour market as well as individual needs – they form the basis for a competitive society and development supported by researchers, entrepreneurs and innovators.
|
Please cite this news item as: ReferNet Romania; Cedefop (2023). Romania: growing interest in STEM competitions in robotics. National news on VET |