A shocking TV documentary about the state of Bulgaria’s schools is set to shake the Education Ministry and the Government itself to its very foundations.

BTV reporter Stoyan Georgiev’s powerful documentary, To The Teacher With Love, shows how bad things are in our country’s school, and how much worse they could get if nothing is done to rectify matters. The film, which centres on the secondary school SOU 85 St Paisii, in Vruzhdebna, Sofia, portrays the daily life and routine of teachers and students alike as a grim battle for survival.

Rampant disillusionment, chronic apathy, thorough disregard for teachers and the education system abound. Not to mention drugs, violence, disrespect for anything and anyone, miserable pay - the lowest teacher salaries in the European Union - disenfranchised children, parents indifferent to anything except their children’s academic progress (or collapse) and who are themselves arrogant and abusive of the teachers and the system... And that is just the beginning.

Georgiev answers an ad for a vacancy in the English department in the school. And although he has absolutely no teaching qualifications and his English only middle school diploma level, he is given the job unquestioningly. Moreover, the school director Viola Popova is shocked that a young man is willing to stoop to the level of a becoming a teacher in a public school.

From day one he is subjected to abuse and a hostile atmosphere generated by almost everyone in the class. There is complete disregard of his position, with students openly drinking alcohol, gambling, sexually groping one another, exposing themselves and using obscene language. Georgiev is repeatedly told to "shut up" and to "sod off".

"It is impossible to communicate with them,” he says in the documentary, “They have no respect and don’t acknowledge you at all. You either have to sink to their level and talk their language or you will simply not register. Only then you can prevail and earn their respect."

Racheva, the economics teacher, says the school lacks just about everything. But perhaps the biggest problem lies in the disillusionment festering in the children’s families.

"No one cares for these children, not even their own parents,” she says in the film. “They don’t care about how they fare at school, the parents themselves express disgust toward the teachers. This attitude comes from home."

"Where is your homework?" Georgiev asks a young student.

"Are you insane? Get out of here," replies a child no more than 12 years of age.

"And where is your homework then?" he asks a female student.

The girl replies: "How about a threesome tonight, you, me and my boyfriend?"

Most male students come to school on mopeds that are not registered, and almost none of them hold a driver’s licence. Their parents are perfectly aware of this, of course.

Amazingly, it was Georgiev's taste in cars that initially broke the ice with the students. His Mini Cooper was seen as a classic, casual and cool. The local school gang knew him as the Mini Cooper Geezer. Daily violence is law. Everyday a child is marked for public beating and humiliation, particularly by the female student body. According to Georgiev, the female students are more brutal, violent and vicious than their male counterparts.

These are students who have been studying English for four to five years and are incapable of saying a single world in English, apart from f*ck and "b*stard.

"What do you know in English?"

"All coppers are b*stards, f*ck you!"

It is ludicrous that students who have been learning English for five years, and cannot utter a single word in the language, have all earned A's in their examinations. The entire educational system is facing irreversible collapse. Students with rich parents remind teachers daily that "any day they can be bought off and told what to do".

Currently Bulgaria is at the bottom of the barrel, with the most hopeless schools and lowest paid teachers who, according to Racheva, "only keep doing the job because they still believe that they are doing something worthwhile and in the hope they will reach a soul and help steer it in the right direction". But the problem is that the profession has reached such low and degrading standards, with meagre wages, that no young people are willing to apply for positions as teachers. And the consequences are there for all to see: illiterate, disillusioned, violent, substance- abusing youth.