The EU Assessment of Bulgarian Education: Insufficient Budget and Poor Infrastructure

In Bulgaria, the prestige of the teaching profession is low and the workforce in the teaching sector is aging. Efforts to modernize the education and training system continue, but improving its quality, relevance to the labor market and inclusiveness remains a challenge. These are part of the conclusions of the European Commission's annual report on education in its part for Bulgaria.

Among other findings, demographic trends and the growing skills gap mean that Bulgaria needs to invest more in the skills of its current and future workforce. The need for advanced training and retraining of the adult population is high, but participation in adult training is low.

Steps have been taken to increase the applicability of vocational education and training to the labor market.

Teachers

The prestige of the teaching profession is low. Although the rate of teacher training programs is approximately the same as the EU average, only 60% of graduates are actually starting the profession. Low salaries are the main factor that prevents young people from choosing the teaching profession. Other negative factors are unattractive working conditions, which are reflected, for example, in inadequate professional development opportunities or in the worsening of the discipline in the classroom.

The teaching profession is particularly unattractive for men, who make up only 17% of school teachers (EU average: 28%).

Only 17.7% of teachers believe that their profession is valued by the public, and only 57% believe that the benefits of being a teacher outweigh the disadvantages (OECD, 2019).

Almost half of the teachers are over 50 years of age and are likely to reach retirement age within the next 10 years; 10% are...