Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev says that far-reaching reforms of the country’s educational system are needed to make the country more competitive, and while expressing sympathy for the teachers who have gone on a national strike for 100 per cent higher pay, says that giving in to their demand could lead to hyperinflation.
He was speaking on October 3 at a conference in Sofia entitled Second Decade of Growth: Risks and Opportunities, organised by Bulgarian newspaper Kapital and German newspaper Handelsblatt.
Stanishev said that teachers made up a fifth of the about 500 000 people employed in the country’s public sector. The Government admitted that teachers were underpaid, even compared to other people in the public sector. It had offered a gradual increase over coming months that would add up to a cumulative 30 per cent, he said.
However, the other problem in education was the quality of secondary and tertiary education, Stanishev said.
As a society, Bulgaria needed to invest more in education and in scientific research while concentrating on reform. These reforms should include decentralization of school management and an end to the artificial thresholds in teacher/pupil ratios.
Stanishev called on business to do more to help enhance the quality of education, for the sake of much-needed improvement of skills in Bulgaria’s labour market.
Ivo Prokopiev, chairperson of the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria, said that improving productivity was key to enhancing Bulgaria’s economic competitiveness.
He said that there had been no reform of Bulgaria’s education system in the past 10 years, under the most recent three governments, and the education system was of low quality and declining.
Given demographic changes which would see the country’s population decrease substantially, there should be a reduction of teacher numbers, and any increase in payment should be conditional on an increase in the quality of education, Prokopiev said.