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Bulgaria is a South East European country situated in the heartland of the Balkan Peninsula. With a territory of 110,993 square kilometers, it ranks among the smaller states of Europe. Bulgaria borders Romania to the north, Yugoslavia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the west, Greece to the south, Turkey to the southeast, and has a Black Sea coast line to the east. Demographic tren…
Education was in a state of reform and had been subject to intense legislative activity throughout the 1990s. The Bulgarian Constitution adopted by the Great National Assembly in 1991 and promulgated in The State Newspaper No. 56 on July 13, 1991 laid out the basic principles of education. Article 53 guaranteed the right to education for all citizens as well as the right to free primary and second…
Education in Bulgaria is compulsory between the ages of 7 and 16. Parents have legal responsibility to secure the school attendance of their child. All schools in the country are co-educational, admitting students of both genders. The official language of instruction is Bulgarian. Schoolchildren who have a different first language, besides the compulsory study of the Bulgarian language may study t…
Preprimary and primary education in Bulgaria consists of two levels—detski yasli (nurseries) for children through the age of three and detski gradini (kindergartens) for children ages three to seven. These age limits are not absolute, since kindergartens often accept children who are two and a half years old, and elementary schools enroll six-year-olds. Attendance in both cases is voluntary…
Secondary education normally covers grades 8 through 12 and is regarded as a preparation for higher education. There exist several types of schools, usually called gymnaziya (high school). Most common is the secondary comprehensive school, which is the third and completing level of general comprehensive school, following the elementary and presecondary levels. In 1999-2000 there were 398 secondary…
Vische obrazovanie (higher education) is the sector of the education system that experienced most intensive growth during the 1990s, despite unfavorable economic conditions and diminishing state funds. This tendency indicates that Bulgarian society in times of economic duress and social crisis resorts to higher education as a reliable investment. The pace of reform and the changes introduced in hi…
Under the communist regime, education was strongly centralized and placed entirely under the control of the state and the communist party. Since the early 1990s, an on-going process of decentralization has brought about considerable changes in this respect. Administration of basic and secondary education is effected on four levels: national, regional, municipal and school level. The Ministry of Ed…
Under communism, formal classroom education was complemented by an extensive system of children and youth organizations and establishments. Since 1989, non-formal education has been gravely destabilized, owing this to ideological considerations, acute shortage of material and financial resources, and a lack of a strategy on the part of the education administration. There exists municipal children&…
A total of 68,482 teachers taught in all Bulgarian schools in 1999-2000: 23,820 in elementary schools (first through fourth grade); 32,479 in presecondary schools (fifth through eighth grade); and 12,283 in secondary schools (ninth through twelfth grade). Women constituted 82 percent of the overall number of teachers, which indicated a marked feminization of the teaching profession. The percentage…
Bulgaria has established democratic traditions in modern secular education, which date back to the middle of the nineteenth century. During the 1990s, the education system was subject to a thorough transformation running parallel to the nation's post-communist transition. The success of the education reform will shape the future of the nation in profound ways. Schools are expected to be an …
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