site.btaEducation Ministry, PISA Begin Strategic Cooperation to Improve Bulgarian Students' Results

Education Minister Galin Tzokov and the Director for Education and Skills, Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the OECD and head of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), Andreas Schleicher, have agreed on the preparation of additional analyses for Bulgaria and support for the assessment reform in the education system, Education Ministry said in a press release on Tuesday.  

The conversation was initiated by Tzokov due to ongoing low results of Bulgarian students in the PISA international comparative examinations. "We have launched a series of reforms and our goal is to lay the foundation for a comprehensive change in the way students' knowledge is assessed - from rote learning to the formation of skills and competences," Tzokov said.

He said that PISA is an international study that has achieved the most in the process of assessing basic skills and the experience gained would be important for the reforms to come. "We are also concerned about the ongoing low scores of our students in the latest PISA surveys in 2018 and want to lay the foundation for real change that will move us away from the bottom of the international rankings," Tzokov said.

Schleicher said that Bulgaria is in a situation where it can only improve results. According to him, countries that report a serious decline in the international survey data are in a worse situation. Bulgaria is showing resilience, which can also be seen as a basis for building on its results, he noted.

He expressed his commitment that his team will assist the Bulgarian Education Ministry in the development of similar tests for schools in the country, and with methodological support to change the teaching model. Schleicher also accepted Tzokov's invitation to participate remotely in a Forum on Digitalization in Bulgarian Education, which will be held in the first half of December.

The two officials also agreed to organise a joint event with the OECD on the change in modern school education, to be held in Bulgaria in February and attended by the head of the PISA programme. 

Their meeting took place in Finland, in the framework of a forum reviewing current education policies, organised by the OECD.