The Ministry of Education and Science will support with targeted policies and programmes the schools with the lowest results of the national external evaluations. “We believe endlessly in the potential of every child and know that we must close the gap in educational achievement. This should be done by raising those who are at the lowest level”, said Deputy Minister of Education and Science Nataliya Miteva during a forum in Sofia Tech Park dedicated to the skills of the future in connection with Bulgaria’s application for accession to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The new “Education” programme envisages large-scale investments aimed at changing the current training model to a more competency-based and skill-oriented one. This is the main recommendation of the OECD, Nataliya Miteva pointed out. According to her, schools with lower results will receive additional support from mentors, plans will be developed to help them and the regime of their work will be released. “They must be able to make a qualitative leap for their students,” the Deputy Mnister of Education pointed out.
She cited the results of the PISA survey, according to which one of the main problems of Bulgarian education is the great inequality between different schools. Therefore, it is extremely necessary to improve the efficiency of educational institutions. Technologies, including artificial intelligence, are an important tool in this process, Natalia Miteva explained.
According to her, a process of transformation of educational systems is currently underway throughout the world, of which Bulgaria is also a part. “While in the 1980s our country was in one of the first places in terms of quality of education according to world standards, now the standard has changed. According to the latest PISA survey, we are still good at teaching children to reproduce knowledge and testing them on this through our national evaluations, but we need to better prepare them to use this knowledge in life,” Natalia Miteva pointed out during the forum.
It is organized by the Diplomatic Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Digital National Coalition. It was attended by the Minister of Labor and Social Policy Ivanka Shalapatova, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tihomir Stoychev, ambassadors, representatives of business, the academic community and various institutions.
