Bulgarian Schools Welcome Students With 2,000 New STEM Centers

Jerusalem, 14 September, 2026 (TPS-IL) -- Sofia (BTA) – Over 55,000 first-graders will cross the school threshold for the first time tomorrow. The first school bell will begin the new school year for over 700,000 students in 2,322 schools in the country, the press center of the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) announced.

Over 92,000 pedagogical specialists work in the education system, with over 20,000 of them working in kindergartens. A positive trend in recent years has been the increase in the number of young people in the system – nearly every fifth pedagogical specialist is now under the age of 35.

Over 2,000 newly built STEM centers will welcome students in the new school year. In state and municipal schools and special educational support centers, there will be training in dedicated STEM spaces and high-tech equipped and connected classrooms. The investment of over 250 million euros under the Recovery and Resilience Plan creates opportunities for more practical tasks, experiments and project work, as well as for connecting knowledge from different subjects.

During the summer months, over 600 repairs were carried out in schools across the country to improve learning and working conditions during the new school year, the Ministry of Education and Science explains.

The first day of school has already arrived for thousands of Bulgarian children abroad. In 410 Bulgarian Sunday schools in 44 countries, the new school year has begun for nearly 40,000 students.

The schools are provided with the necessary textbooks and learning kits and are ready to welcome students for the first day of school, the Ministry of Education announced.

“Probably this week we will present our proposals for improving discipline in school, and they are in three groups . One is related to punishments, and before reaching the ultimate measure of expulsion, there should be a series of milder punishments so that the teacher can warn the student with these punishments,” said the Minister of Education and Science, Prof. Georgi Valchev, in the morning block of the Bulgarian National Television.