New School Year Starts in Bulgaria

Jerusalem, 15 September, 2022 (TPS) -- SOFIA, 15.09.2022 (BTA)
The new school year begins in Bulgaria Thursday. Nearly 717,000 pupils are returning to the classrooms for what everybody hopes to be a “normal” post-pandemic school year. Among them are over 57,000 first-graders. It is a festive occasion for teachers and pupils, especially the younger ones.

All of Bulgaria’s 2,347 schools and 1,799 kindergartens begin with in-person classes. The teacher unions said teachers are determined to work this way for as long as possible.

Some schools are experiencing a shortage of teachers but the vacancies started to get fewer in the run-up to the first day of school.

Schools have also hired 1,216 mediators and 182 social workers.

Education Minister Sasho Penov will open the new school year in Sofia and will travel to the southern town of Karlovo later in the day to visit a vocational school that was flooded during a recent flash flood.

Close to 900 schools had repairs in the summer and 46 could not finish them, as a result of which classes will be moved to other buildings.

The schools have already secured free schoolbooks for 1- to 7-graders.

A total of 1,222 teams have been set up with 18,244 experts in them, to make sure all children of school age attend classes. The Education Minister recently said that an increasing number of children at increased risk of dropping out, are now included in the education system thanks to this mechanism involving the Ministries of Education, of Social Policy and the Interior, and other institutions.

A new electronic information system for pre-school and school education becomes operational this year, which means that all processes and information in education will be digitized. The system includes electronic grade logbooks and personal files for all students from grades 1 to 12. Some 100,000 teachers, 700,000 students and 1.5 million parents will have access to the new electronic system.