News

About 206 000 children aged 5 to 18 are not in kindergartens or schools and will be sought out by 1103 teams across the country with more than 11602 experts - teachers, social workers, community staff, mediators, etc. The first task we set up is that most of these children can return to school. By mid-October, representatives of institutions will walk through the addresses of the students, who are out of range and will do everything in their power to make them attend school regularly. The next important steps are to ensure that these children stay in classrooms and receive quality education. There is already a national phone for signals for students out of range - 080010112.

These were some of the things announced at a press conference on measures to include dropouts from the education system. It took place in the Council of Ministers on 1 September. The press conference was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev, Minister of Education Krasimir Valchev, Deputy Ministers Denitsa Sacheva and Tanya Mihailova and experts from the Mechanism for joint work of the institutions on enrollment in the educational system and prevention of dropping out of children and students at compulsory school age.

The number of 206 000 uncovered is obtained by detecting between the information systems for the born in Bulgaria and the ADMIN system of the Ministry of Education and Science for the students in Bulgarian schools and kindergartens. This number does not include 99 000 children who have gone abroad with their families and this is registered by the Border Police. It is very likely that 206 000 children missing in the classrooms will also be abroad, others will "appear" in the detection of all systems, but the number of dropouts is large, a fact that  became clear during the pressconference. Their return to school is one of the government's key priorities and will mobilize the resources of all systems, the participants stressed.

Vice Premier Donchev added that the commitment to raise teachers' salaries will be fulfilled and that special attention will be paid to teachers working with children from vulnerable groups. Linking social payments with child attendance will be an important measure that we will strictly apply, stressed Donchev: the requirement for children to attend kindergarten and school will be a condition for obtaining a very wide range of social payments that have so far had no connection with attendance. We talk to the legislature about criminalizing the suspension of children from school.

Minister Valchev stressed that pre-primary education is key to the scope and special measures will be taken in this direction. He pointed out that changes to the system of delegated budgets are planned so that the funding will not be based on a mere number of pupils and that the "hidden dropout" will be decreased.

More information about planned measures will be available at www.amalipe.com