Teachers’ gross salary in most of the schools would not reach 650 leva as promised by the Cabinet in the autumn of 2007 after a one-month teachers' strike.

According to the new budget and the state subsidy for students, which were approved by the Cabinet and went into force in the beginning of 2008, some teachers and other school staff would be dismissed. The state would not fund additionally the secondary education sector, Dnevnik daily reported.

The municipalities themselves would have to fund the schools to secure their survival or would have to close the most unprofitable ones, Dnevnik said.

The only schools the state would fund additionally were the so-called “protected schools”. The status protected school would be given each year, beginning with the school year 2008-2009 to schools which were located at more than 20 km away from the nearest highschool. The amount of the additional funding will be allocated individually to each school.

Boyan Zahariev, programme director of the Open Society Institute, said that the decision of the Cabinet on the funding was taken hastily and an average state subsidy of 1151 leva per student was insufficient. As a result, the education system would have problems for at least the next three years. “There will be bankruptcies,” he said.

Deputy Sofia mayor Iordanka Fandukova said that situation in Sofia was ‘dramatic’ as there were many schools in the city and the student subsidy was the lowest, 980 leva. Dismissal of teachers was inevitable, she said.

The money for schools in Sofia would be 15 million leva less than in 2007 and would finish by June, Fandukova said. The situation would be worse in schools with less than 800 students.

Education Ministry admitted that there would be problems, but only in schools with small classes, because the state funding would depend on the number of classes and students in the schools.