Twenty-two national programmes for the development of education have been approved by the Branch Council for Education, which is meeting today at the Ministry of Education and Science. Two of them are new – “Road Safety” and “No Aggression for a Safe Educational Environment”.
For the first, a budget of over BGN 4,000,000 is foreseen, with the aim being the formation and development of competences for responsible behavior of children and students, related to road safety (RS). This will be done by supporting education on RS, building sites for its implementation, using an interactive application for road safety, as well as providing means of transport for transporting children and students of compulsory preschool and school age. It is also envisaged that electric buses will be included in the transport schemes.
The new national programme (NP) for the prevention of aggression and bullying is worth BGN 500,000 and is a continuation of the activities carried out last year under the module “School without Aggression for a Safe School Environment” of the NP “Support for the Personal Development of Children and Students “. The measures aimed at creating a safe educational environment without aggression will cover a larger number of schools and will also include kindergartens.
The national programme for conducting national standardized external assessment also includes activities related to the preparation of schools for participation in the international survey PISA 2025. Among them are the preparation of sample topics on the survey framework and the creation of a bank of tasks in the field of natural sciences for the preparation of students.
Improving the competences of students, teachers and management teams in terms of cyber security and safe use of the Internet is a new point in the programme to provide information and communication technologies in the preschool and school education system. It also provides for the provision of reading devices for students with dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia.
The NP “Ensuring a Modern, Safe and Accessible Educational Environment” will include activities for career guidance and counseling of personal development support centers and schools, equipment and provision of consumables and materials that help career guidance, and creation of informational and methodical career guidance and counseling resources.
This year’s National Programme “Innovation in Action” focuses on schools that have introduced new subjects and interdisciplinary modules. The budget of this new module is expected to be BGN 1.8 million.
There will be new modules in the programmes “Bulgaria – Educational Routes”, “Professional Education and Training” and “Prevention and Rehabilitation of Pedagogical Specialists”. The activities under the first will include the Bulgarian Sunday schools abroad, supported by the Ministry of Education and Science and the Bulgarian public schools abroad, with the planned budget of BGN 500,000. That will be the value of the “Profession Competitions” Module under the NP “Professional Education and Training”. BGN 95,000 are planned for activities related to overcoming the professional chronic stress of teachers under the programme for the rehabilitation and prevention of pedagogical specialists.
At the meeting of the Branch Council, Minister Galin Tsokov, the deputy ministers, experts from the Ministry of Education and Science and social partners also discussed a vision for creating a quality standard in education and the procedures for building STEM classrooms in schools. Children from 91 Kindergarten “Sunny Corner” gave martenitsa to all participants and congratulated them with poems on the occasion of March 1.
