site.btaNew School Year Starts amid Measures against COVID-19

September 15 (BTA) - The new school year started on Tuesday amid a set of compulsory and recommended measures listed a 31-page long memo of the ministries of education and of health.

Ministers, politicians and public figures congratulated school-goers and teachers.

Official welcoming ceremonies were held only for pupils in the first, fifth and eighth grades because they meet for the first time with new teachers and schoolmates.

This year the first graders are close to 59,000, while the total number of school-goers is 717,400, enrolled in 2,359 schools.

In his address for the start of the school year, Education and Science Minister Krassimir Vulchev said that in the last months of the previous school year the education system proved able to cope with the challenges of the pandemic but also showed that on-line schooling cannot substitute the real communication with teachers in the classroom.

In a Facebook post Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said that "at the backdrop of a raging coronavirus epidemic problems and questions are sure to emerge which we will tackle together, trying to find the best solutions". Borissov congratulated teachers, pupils and parents, saying that the teachers' pay is set to increase by more than 15 per cent. Thus, the ruling majority will deliver on its promise for a double increase of teachers' salaries for the four-year term in office.

Also in a Facebook post Movement for Rights and Freedoms Chairman Mustafa Karadayi said that this school year will be different. "The Bulgarian school and we all are faced with the new challenge of studying and creating amid a still raging pandemic," Karadayi said.

In a statement the parliamentary group of the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) too noted that this school year will be different. "This year the talk is of masks, shields, sanitizers, epidemiological measures, in-person schooling, on-line and distance schooling, physical and social distancing," the statement reads. The BSP notes that the Education and Science Ministry owes the public an in-depth analysis of the consequences from the on-line schooling last year, and also that every effort needs to be made to provide the conditions for in-person schooling.

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The Justice Ministry said that 986 prison inmates, out of a total of 6,443, are enrolled in prison schools in the new school year. The penitentiary system has seven secondary schools with six branches. There are 75 inmates who are enrolled in the first grade this year. RI/ZH
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