site.btaEducation Minister Warns of Risks of "Demographics of Illiterates Spiral"

Sofia, September 11 (BTA) - The reproduction rate of mothers with less than elementary education is 3.5 times higher than those of the others in Bulgaria and this spiral of "the demographics of the illiterate" is one of the greatest threats to preserving the Bulgarian nation and the country, Education and Science Minister Krassimir Vulchev said. He was speaking at a Monday discussion on education and demography.

A country with poorly educated people has no working institutions, no economy, no civil society or normal living environment, the Minister pointed out.

Families where the parents are poorly educated have no children's books, teaching aids or a culture of respect for education, Vulchev said. "When they enter the educational system, children from such families have already built up so much deficits that the educational institutions fail to compensate them and the results are early school dropouts."

According to Vulchev, Bulgaria's future depends on whether it has well or poorly educated population - not on whether its population is large or small.

To make matters worse, the increase of the poorly educated population encourages well-educated Bulgarians to leave their own country, Vulchev said.

He said that 90 per cent of the Roma in Bulgaria have education lower than secondary but added that it is wrong to put an equation sign between the Roma and the illiterate.

It is difficult to break the spiral of the "demographics of illiterates", to use the Minister's phrase, but when it comes to education it means mandatory education and motivated teachers - something that has been set down in the government programme.

"Failure to attend kindergarten and school should be considered equal to a crime," Vulchev said. He argued that the education of children until they are 16 is a constitutional obligation and failing to comply gives the State the moral right to use some sort of pressure and to link social and other rights to that.

According to the Minister, culture or the family attitude to education is the main factor for not going to school. Early school dropouts of children or their average results depend on the educational status of the parents, the social and regional environment, as well as on the mother tongue of the students, Vulchev said.

He added that sanctions for parents whose children do not go to school exist in the Pre-school and School Education Act but the municipalities do not enforce them.

He argued that teachers are the most important factor to keep the children in school. Teacher wages should be increased dramatically and maintained at an average 120 per cent of the national average. Also, secondary school leavers with good academic results should be encouraged to consider a teaching career.

Summing up the situation in education at the forum, Prof. Antoaneta Hristova, Director of the Institute of Societies and Knowledge with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, said that fewer children are born in Bulgaria and an ever increasing number of them don't do to school; at the same time, teachers get older and their status in society gets lower.

She spoke about the ethnic makeup of education. Bulgarians with higher education are 25.6 per cent, ethnic Turks with university diplomas are 4.9 per cent and Roma are 0.5 per cent. The Roma with primary education are 40.8 per cent, the ethnic Turks 44.5 per cent and ethnic Bulgarians 18 per cent. Illiterate Bulgarians are 0.9 per cent, Turks are 7.5 per cent and the Roma 21.8 per cent.

Ethnic Bulgarians with university degree, who have left Bulgaria for good from 1990 to present, are 31.9 per cent. The like figure for Bulgarians with primary education is 47.6 and with elementary education 4.8 per cent