News

The Ministry of Education stops funding the closure of schools, instead of this it will support all schools by covering retirement benefits for teachers and optimizing the internal staff structure. A special program will provide the resources needed for the scope teams, as schools will receive additional resources to work with parents and will be able to attract organizations, civic centers and other partners in this effort. The qualification of teachers and principals will also be further supported by state budget funds.

These and a number of other innovative elements are set out in the drafts of the State Education Development Programs 2018. For the development of education in 2018, the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) proposes to finance 13 national programs (NP). Through them, the MES provides additonal funding for pre-school and school education by BGN 63 430 000. In 2016 the funds for NP were BGN 59 500 000 and in 2016 the amount was BGN 50 394 000. The funds are provided from the budget of the Ministry of Education and Science.

Three of the 13 national programs proposed are new and the remaining 10 were implemented in 2017. The new programs are: "Together for every child", "Care for every pupil" (performed in previous years except for 2017), and "Optimizing the internal structure of staff in institutions from the system of pre-school and school education".

The scope of the NP "Providing a Contemporary Educational Environment" has been expanded and three new modules have been developed:

- "Museums as an educational environment", which aims to create a more interesting and attractive environment in schools;

- "Evaluating and approving projects of cognitive books, textbooks and training kits" to ensure equal access to quality pre-school and school education, by professional and objective assessment of the drafts of cognitive books, textbooks and training kits;

- "Provision of School Lockers" to modernize the educational environment by purchasing lockers in which students hold their textbooks in order to make backpacks more comfortable to wear.

The "Together for Every Child" National Program will support the efforts of the inter-institutional teams by scope and will provide BGN 250000 for business trips of the teams in the course of the "visit to address" measure, according to the Ordinance on business trips in the country. RED will receive 50000 BGN for disseminating results activities. The program also provides BGN 150,000 under the Module "Good Practices for Interaction of Educational Institutions with Parents". It will be elligible to kindergartens and schools with projects up to 4950 leva. They will be able to attract organizations, civic centers and other partners in this effort by delegating them some of the activities.

The NP "Optimization of the internal structure of the staff" will provide BGN 28 million to cover extremely important and unavoidable expenses: for the compensation of the staff under Art. 221, para. 1, Art. 222, para. 1, 2 and 3 and Art. 224 of the Labor Code and the insurance contributions for the benefits under Art. 222, para. 1 of the Labor Code. At the expense of the budget of the module, the benefits under Art. 222, para. 3 will be covered, but not more than ten salaries of a pedagogical specialist if he meets the conditions of Art. 219, para. 5 of the Preschool and School Education Act and eight salaries per person by the non-pedagogical staff. These costs will not burden the delegated school budget, which will be of great support to schools.

The proposed national programs also contain certain weaknesses. For example, the funds under Module "Good Practices for Interaction of Educational Institutions with Parents" are too few and will only reach 30 schools. Probably the interest will be much higher.

"Qualification" NP contains very good training ideas, but it is envisaged that they will be carried out only by the National Center for Qualification and Re-Qualification -  Ie. it does not allow schools / principals / teachers to choose who to train them.

Beneficiary of the Module "Modernizing the System of Vocational Education", Activity 1 "Modernizing the Material and Technical Base" of the NP "Providing a Modern Educational Environment" is only the vocational schools and not the united schools, which carry out vocational training. They have a particularly acute need but are omitted ...

April 6 is the deadline for all interested parties to send comments and suggestions to: t.petkova@mon.bg