site.btaBulgarian Education Minister Participates in Global Education Industry Summit in Jerusalem

Bulgarian Education Minister Participates in Global Education Industry Summit in Jerusalem

Jerusalem/Sofia, September 26 (BTA) - Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Education and Science Minister Meglena Kuneva took part in the Global Education Industry Summit in Jerusalem, her Ministry said Monday.

Kuneva is on a working visit to Israel.

At the forum, she presented the philosophy behind Bulgaria's new Pre-School and School Education Act, underscoring the measures for teacher training. "When we were discussing the reform, its focus, naturally, was the student: how to make school interesting for students, what environment to create, what school books, how to make the curricula more interesting. But no matter what we discuss about students, we all understand that there is no reform without teachers. They are the driving force in education. Our role as politicians, and our topmost priority, is to create conditions to enable teachers perform to the best of their capacity in the best interest of students," said the Bulgarian Education Minister.

She spoke about the problem with the ageing of the teaching profession in Bulgaria.

A quarter of Bulgarian teachers are older than 56 and 40 per cent are older than 45. This makes it vital to train them how to use new technologies, said Kuneva.

Attending the forum are education ministers, experts, teachers and representatives of the non-government sector and businesses. The Bulgarian delegation also includes a school principal from Sofia and a teacher from Varna.

Kuneva is also scheduled to confer with Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett.