site.btaSofia Forum Looks at State of Play in Bulgarian Education with Focus on Use of Technologies in School

The Education Ministry held a forum in Sofia looking at the failures and accomplishments of Bulgarian education, with a focus on the use of technologies in school. Among the participants was Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov and Education Minister Galin Tzokov, educators, students, entrepreneurs, NGO representatives.

The forum took place just a week after the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) put out the 2022 results of its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) showing that Bulgarian students score way below the OECD average.

In his opening remarks, Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov spoke about having to change the focus of the entire system - curriculum and schoolbooks - to teaching students how to use their knowledge. "That should be our main goal in the coming years," he said. "I want to say it very clearly: without changing the textbooks, there is no chance that children will understand that it is not important to be able to reproduce memorized facts, dates and names: you have to be able to analyze the text," the Prime Minister said. "Curricula and textbooks are a tool, and we need to change them. Teacher training must be dramatically transformed and that will happen via the universities and we must work with the university professors", said Denkov.

In his address at the forum held in the Sofia Tech Park, Education Minister Galin Tzokov said that close to 100,000 students and teachers improved their digital skills under Ministry-backed projects, using EU funding and hard work by many players in the education system: students, teachers, school principals.

Digital School Bag

He praised a new education platform, Digital School Bag, which offers free educational resources for all subjects, including lesson plans, presentations, 3D models and videos. The platform can be used by all teachers and students, and teachers are encouraged to contribute content and develop their own lessons and reaching material there. "It is a rough diamond in our educational system," said the Minister.

He argued that the latest PISA assessment showed that where the national education system develop such platforms, the results don't take long to show, and said that one example is Estonia where students' performance improved after the pandemic, in contrast to almost everywhere else. 

Vision for Hi-tech, AI in school

It transpired at the forum that an expert commission of over 40 experts in various fields has been set up with the Education Ministry to prepare a vision for "meaningful introduction of technologies" in education, including a framework for use of AI in schools.

The Minister said that a standard for school education will be presented in the coming weeks.

Also, legislative changes will be adopted to ensure stronger education and psychological support for children in creches.

The participants in the forum heard an address by the EU Commissioner Iliana Ivanova and watched a video presentation of an analysis of the PISA results for Bulgarian students.

School principals, teachers, students, academics, entrepreneurs and NGOs shared their good practices for use of digital technologies for improving teaching and education.