Chisinau, May 18 - AGERPRES special correspondent Cristian Lupascu reports: Prince Radu on Monday proposed to Moldovan Education Minister Dan Perciun the development of an online platform dedicated to helping all Moldovan citizens, regardless of age, improve their Romanian language skills.

The representative of the Romanian Royal House said during an official meeting with the education minister in Chisinau that the new platform could be developed through a partnership with Google Romania and could become a tool for improving Romanian language learning throughout the Republic of Moldova and beyond.

'Some time ago, one or two years back, Madam President of the Republic of Moldova told Her Majesty [Margareta, Custodian of the Romanian Crown] that she was concerned about the need for a stronger pedagogical effort in teaching the Romanian language, because there are far more people wishing to learn it than schools are able to accommodate. (...) One of the ideas is to develop an online learning system. We have spoken with Google Romania, which has now become a regional hub. There is a centre in Bucharest covering the whole of South-Eastern Europe, and the director of Google Romania learned about this project from us and said they would be very willing to create a portal, using their own financial resources and without involving the Republic of Moldova in any way, through which Romanian could be learned at all levels and by all age groups, not only by citizens of the Republic of Moldova, but also by Romanians in Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria or London - anyone wishing to access it and take online courses. This is therefore one way of reaching villages and towns. If people have the necessary tools and an internet connection, they can do it.,' Prince Radu said.

He also proposed the creation of a teaching corps made up of retired teachers from Romania who could teach Romanian language courses for several months in schools across the Republic of Moldova.

At the same time, His Royal Highness suggested involving Romanian students who, during holidays, could take part in Romanian language teaching courses in the Republic of Moldova through workshops or language clubs.

For his part, Moldovan Education Minister Dan Perciun welcomed the proposals put forward by the Romanian Royal House, underlining that expanding Romanian-language education is a matter of national security.

'What we see in exams is a precarious situation, especially in very small localities where there is no environment for practising the language and where it sometimes happens that even the teacher does not have a sufficiently good command of it. Therefore, the possibility of using at least well-prepared resources that would expose young people to quality education and well-developed materials would be of great help. In any case, we wanted to explore an idea through which, for small rural schools where we face staff shortages, we could provide access to good teachers remotely,' Minister Dan Perciun said.

Prince Radu also held talks on Monday in Chisinau with Parliament Speaker Igor Grosu and with the management of one of the Republic of Moldova's largest commercial banks, Victoria Bank. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Marius Fratila; EN - writing by: Simona Iacob)