The digital divide in Romania represents a critical barrier to achieving equitable education, with significant long-term consequences for students across urban and rural regions, but also having a large impact on the education system overall, which is failing to adapt and provide the means to rebalance these inequalities.

Large urban areas benefit from better access to digital infrastructure and therefore learning opportunities, enabling enhanced teaching methodologies, access to a wide range of digital resources, and the development of advanced skills. In contrast, rural schools face persistent challenges such as a lack of technological tools, insufficient teacher training, but also missing interest in digital mediums. These disparities enhance educational inequities, resulting in unequal learning outcomes, reduced digital literacy, and inevitably, places learners in a disadvantage when it comes to finding and applying to career opportunities.

The broader educational consequences of technological inequality are varied and multifaceted, in the sense that, in the short term, rural students face challenges in engaging with curricula that are not only developing very quickly, but also increasingly rely on digital tools, hindering academic achievement. Over time, these disparities contribute to a larger gap in skill development, limiting rural students' competitiveness, first of all in securing the desired seat in higher education institutions, and secondly, in the job market. Moreover, looking at, and addressing the ability of educators from rural areas, the technological inequality has a bigger impact on how they innovate and adapt to contemporary teaching demands and methods. At the societal level, these imbalances undermine efforts to foster social cohesion and economic growth, as unequal access to education restricts upward mobility and limits the development of a digitally competent workforce.

Keywords: Digitalisation, opportunity, competition, educators' skills, social inequality, educational inequality.