The Education Program Committee approved 8 new operations and discussed a host of issues, including the change to the Preschool and School Education Act

The Education Programme Monitoring Committee voted on 8 new operations for over half a billion BGN, an Indicative Annual Work Programme and discussed a number of issues related to the development of the Programme. Among them were the changes in the education law from August 2024.

The autumn meeting of the Education Programme Monitoring Committee was held on 26-28 November 2024 in the city of. Sandanski. The Deputy Minister of Education Natalia Miteva, the Executive Director of the Education Programme Executive Agency prof. Ms. Emmanuelle Grange from the Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, representatives of the main institutions concerned, social partners and NGOs. Organizations working for educational integration of vulnerable ethnic communities were represented by Deyan Kolev.

In their opening speeches Natalia Miteva, prof. Vaisilov and Emmanuel Grange pointed out the development and challenges faced so far in the implementation of the Programme “Education. It became clear that there has already been a delay in the implementation of the programme, which leads to the real threat that at the end of 2025 funds will be lost (or they will be redirected to the Human Resources Development Programme). The delay comes primarily from the low interest in the ITI (Integrated Territorial Investments) approach and the delay of the MoES in announcing the systemic project for the development of key competences. In order to quickly catch up with this delay and to avoid the loss of funds for the education system, the Managing Authority proposes 4 operations for competitive selection of projects to be implemented throughout the country and will have to cover the lack of interest of municipalities to include educational measures under the ITI approach. As the announcement, approval of projects and advance payments under grant procedures always take time, this is unlikely to avoid the risk of loss of funds. The Ministry of Education and Science has committed to launch the operation for the formation of key competences in January-February, to launch the new operation for the digitalisation of school education and to master the implementation of the systemic projects “Success for You” and “Strong Start”.

In his speech, Deyan Kolev pointed out the danger of the change in the UDHR of 7 August 2024, the so-called “anti-LGBT” change. He stressed that there has never been LGBT propaganda in Bulgarian schools and this change in the education law was made entirely for political reasons. But if the European Commission decides to review whether the said change is in line with the EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights (it is a trigger for the programme) and in the meantime stops payments to Bulgaria, this will lead to a huge loss of funds, which will exceed even the pessimistic scenarios. Kolev shared Amalipe’s experience of working with schools in recent weeks, pointing out that the change has not led to the suspension of the work of educational institutions, but in many of them (especially those with new principals) there are concerns about conducting activities that are outside the immediate educational process. This observation was shared by Gergana Efremova, representative of the National Network of Children. Kolev also pointed out the threats to the activities of civil society organizations and the schools working with them that the possible adoption of a law on the registration of foreign agents would lead to.

In response, Ms Grange stressed that the EC was following with concern the adoption of the amendments to the Pre-School and School Education Act and a week ago sent a third letter with questions to the Minister of Education to assess how to react. Deputy Minister Efremova pointed out that the Ministry of Education had expressed a clear opinion against the adoption of this change in the Pre-School and School Education Act and then defended the teachers who had petitioned against it. Therefore, the EC’s questions should also be directed to the political parties that have led to this serious problem.

The Monitoring Committee approved 8 new operations and the indicative annual work programme. The approved programme contains the operations planned until the end of 2025, what they will involve, at what cost they will be financed and when they will be announced.

The approved operations are coming soon on the website of Center “Amalipe”