Private schools in Bulgaria should have state funding on the “money follows the student” principle, Milka Slavcheva, head of the Bulgarian Association of Private Schools (BAPS), was quoted as saying on October 16 by Dnevnik daily.

There was no clear state policy on private education. The latter needed, if not a separate law, then at least some paragraphs in the new draft of an act on education, which was currently under preparation. The texts would regulate the statute of the private school’s ownership, as well as the rights and obligations of their headmasters and teachers. The new piece of legislation would have to define a way of making private educational institutions equal to the public and municipal ones, said Slavcheva.

Around 10 000 pupils visited private primary and secondary schools in Bulgaria, while the students in private universities and colleges were 1350, BAPS data showed. Private education covered 1.3 per cent of all education in the country, Slavcheva said.

In most European countries the figure was much higher, like in the Netherlands where it reached 60 per cent, and Spain where it was 23 per cent, said Carlos Diaz Muniz, chairman of the European Council of National Association of Independent Schools (ECNAIS). ECNAIS spent a lot of efforts to achieve a status for private schools equal to public ones, he said.