About the time when Bulgarian society entered its teenage years (in the 15th year of the transition from communism to democracy) it started showing interest in the quality of its education.

Why, one might ask? There are many reasons, two more important than the others.

First, Bulgarian citizens have noticed that they invest a considerable part of their personal incomes in education, including in its free and compulsory forms such as school education.

From being an exception in the early 1990s, the formula, “I pledge my possessions and work in three different places to cover my expenses for education, training to get a better position” has become a regular practice even for people with low or average incomes.

Second, Bulgarian entrepreneurs and employers (the public sector included) have noticed that it has become extremely difficult for them to find well-qualified staff. Worse, in some cases employers come across people with qualification certificates that have no relation to their capacity and real working skills.

In both cases, the problem threatens long-term investments and projects. That is why it is no surprise that the issue, step by step, has become a priority in public debate, and the country’s institutions have started the search for a solution. So far, there is nothing much extraordinary about this. At the end of the 1990s, all economically developed countries started asking themselves the same questions. The internet has ample information on the stages of educational reforms currently underway in Europe and the US.

The reason for the slow response by Bulgarian society (citizens and institutions included), which stumbles at each little step on its way to satisfactory education, is not the “system’s resistance” or “a collapse of moral values”, “lack of funds”, “lack of qualified teachers” or the “demographic crisis and the brain drain”.

All of these have been offered as the reason for the crisis in Bulgarian education. The reason, which is somewhat tragic-comic, has emerged to be the lack of a system of indicators for monitoring the quality of Bulgaria’s national education, as well as the lack of a system of data collecting of these indicators, and their public announcement.

Without this information, there is no way that you can form a policy for six to 12 years of long-term development.

Unfortunately the political elite in Bulgaria still thinks in four years frames. This, then, is the cycle of change in Bulgarian education. It is also impossible to mobilise a public resource, because it is simply not possible to estimate how much of this resource is needed and how to set its priorities. The presence of such information, however, will delete most of the widely discussed problems. The so called “system’s resistance” will turn into an nsignificant problem if the system itself and the people who use it can understand what they are achieving.

The lack of funds most probably will come to zero as a problem if the funds currently invested in the grey sector of the education system (almost a quarter of the annual budget for education) go to the legal economy and can be compared to results achieved.

Until we find a solution that will overcome this chronic lack of objective information on the state of Bulgarian education, every theory (positive or negative) on the subject of its quality would be groundless.

We can hope that the nearing EU membership of Bulgaria will take the issue of the competitiveness of Bulgarian education out of its familiar context. A context grounded in claims such as: “65 per cent of the children of school X are continuing their education abroad” or “we have to introduce final exams in high schools in order to be competitive and to meet European education standards”. Let us hope that the EU membership of Bulgaria will turn the whole issue into a public debate, with policy and concrete measures based on data.  For example, data on how many Bulgarian children who go to study abroad actually graduate from their educational institutions. How long it takes them to graduate and what becomes of them after graduation compared to those who graduate in Bulgaria. There should also be data on how the ratio of Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian students in Bulgarian universities will change after 2007 when all universities will have to have equal fees. There should be further data, on what was actually achieved with the 80 million leva invested in the past two school years in the “Hot Milk and Breakfast” programme for pupils from the first to the fourth grade.

At very least, there should be data about illiteracy - both written and technical - which nowadays are almost equally important.  

On the occasion of May 24, the Day of the Cyrillic Alphabet, we want to congratulate only the following:

* The teachers who have not forgotten that their profession exists only to educate the young, because they are not afraid of the assessment of their achievements;

* Those students who have not forgotten that a diploma is a certificate of knowledge and skills. It is not a certificate for the amount of money paid in tuition and the time spent in schools and universities, because they are the real consumers of competitive education; and

* Those Bulgarian politicians who in 2012 openly and honestly will carry the responsibility of their decisions today in the field of education.

The Paidea Foundation is an NGO specialising in issues related to education.