On the eve of May 24, celebrated in Bulgaria as the Day of Education in honour of Saints Cyril and Methodius, President Georgi Purvanov publicly thanked the country’s teachers for keeping educational standards high.

On the day itself, Purvanov saluted people working in education and science who, he said, “sometimes do the impossible so that Bulgaria can compete with the countries of Europe”.

Those teachers had just been given a small bonus in honour of the day, although it was scarcely a sum that would encourage them much in the context of an average monthly salary of little more than 300 leva.

It was just a few months ago that teachers went on strike for higher pay, gaining a small concession in the process. The previous and current Bulgarian governments have taken some steps towards getting computers into schools, and reform of the education system is said to be a work in progress. Yet outstanding issues remain, with debating points including whether schools and universities are appropriately resourced, and whether teaching methods, especially at university level, are the most effective.

In these warm weeks of early summer, the cacophony from garishly-dressed teenagers hanging out of cars signals the end of their school careers. Some will be going straight on to the job market, seeking the optimum that their school education can secure them, here or perhaps outside the country. Others will make up the more than 28 000 first-year students being admitted to Bulgarian universities in the early autumn.

In the context of Bulgaria’s progress towards the European Union, many young people have their eyes turned towards employment prospects in the EU. Education has not turned up as an issue in European Commission reports on Bulgaria for some time, but after all the EC would not be regarded by the market as the final arbiter of the worth of a Bulgarian education. This is an issue that would be decided by the market itself.

In an interview with a Bulgarian-language newspaper, published on May 24, Sofia University rector Professor Boyan Biolchev, asked whether Bulgarian graduates could compete in the context of the EU, said that most of the best graduates from his university were not in Bulgaria.

This, he said, was evidence that the “other world” was “quick at deciding that it needs them”.

“We have produced a mind that is applicable anywhere,” Biolchev said. He said that there were educational institutions capable of destroying any mind, adding that Sofia University did not belong in this category.

The question is, however, when there are debates about the usefulness of the courses offered by some universities, and when graduates in private conversation cast aspersions on the standards of some of Bulgaria’s universities, and when graduates aspire sometimes not only to working elsewhere in Europe but to completing their education there too, how worthwhile is a Bulgarian education?