The development of the bilingual linguistic landscape of Liviu Rebreanu Elementary School

Tîrgu Mureș-Marosvásárhely, 2011- 1st of September 2013℘

The Liviu Rebreanu school has been included in a legal action back in 2010-2011 and the National Council for Combating Discriminaton (NCCD) has declared in its decision that the school’s linguistic landscape was discriminative.

After the decision of the NCCD the school did not change the monolingual features, the public interest information remained monolingual, the same happened with the inscriptions of the classrooms. The parents of the Hungarian pupils have decided to take steps in order to offer solution to this discriminative situation. They have collected money and offered to the school management bilingual inscriptions in the form of donation. The school director has denied the acceptance of the bilingual school inscription donations of the Hungarian parents; as a result the parents have decided to organize flash mobs in the front of the school asking for the approval of their donation, which would have partially ended the discriminatory practice of the school. During the advocacy campaign of the parents, our NGO was the advocacy advisor of the initiators.

After several flash mobs of the parents the school director remained uncooperative, more than that she expressed that she will never allow bilingual school inscriptions in the school. Our NGO has filed a second complaint towards NCCD regarding the discriminatory practice of the school. NCCD in its decision declared the school discriminative toward the Hungarian students and their parents and fined the school director with 600 RON.

After the NCCD decision the County School Inspectorate dismissed the director and a new director was appointed. In the summer of 2013 the parents were allowed to place their donations within the school premises, the school did not purchase bilingual inscriptions.

The posting of the public interest information on the school billboard remained monolingual. Please consult attached in the Annex 11, sections of the original (formulated in Romanian) NCCD decision number 396 from 12 June, 2013, the relevant parts are highlighted.