The new curricula: what gaps have been identified and what lies ahead?
The Ministry of education and science (MES) has published an analysis/summary of current curricula in general education subjects. It is based on 5 surveys of key stakeholders – teachers, students and parents. What do the surveys highlight as problems, what changes does the MES analysis suggest and what is planned for the months ahead?
The MES analysis/summary is based on five specially organised surveys – a teacher survey (involving over 18,000 teachers), surveys among pupils from 3rd to 10th grade (involving 5,200 children and young people), a survey among parents and children conducted by Gallup International Balkan, questionnaires with 210 teachers who participated in working groups to evaluate the current curriculum and an analysis of the results of the National external evaluation over the last two years. The analysis can be found HERE.
This is the first stage of the process of developing the new curricula initiated by the Ministry of Education half a year ago. During the conference “The State of Educational Integration: from Segregation to Studying in Ethnically Mixed Environment”, organized by Center “Amalipe”. The conference was held on the 4th of July in Sofia. The Minister of Education Acad. Denkov pointed out that at this first stage, the aim was primarily to find out what of the current curricula (and the textbooks based on them) had been causing problems for students, what challenges were present and what immediate changes were needed to make the topics and lessons easier to understand. Minister Denkov also outlined the next two stages that lie ahead:
- In August-September, working groups made up of pedagogical specialists, experts from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Culture will make proposals for changes in some of the topics – both to drop certain topics and to include others that have been omitted. The participation of experts from outside the institutions, e.g. from NGOs, independent experts, etc. is also envisaged during at this stage. According to Acad. Denkov this stage should be finalized by the end of September 2022.
- Stage three: a broad public consultation on the new textbooks, which will reflect the changes made to the curricula, should take place in October-November 2022. During the conference (4 July), the Minister for Education expressed his view that it was very important that textbooks did NOT include more topics than those set out in the curricula. Additional topics and information could be included in teaching aids and online resources, but should not burden textbooks.
What does the analysis of the current curricula suggest: revolution, change or ‘Perestroika’?
The new curricula came into force after the approval of the Law on Pre-school and School Education and currently students from every educational stage have been educated according to them. In which years did the new curricula come into force?
From this perspective, the initiated curriculum evaluation process is timely and should be continued with changes – where they are needed. There is a widespread view among many experts, as well as among the general public, that Bulgarian education does not sufficiently reflect the needs of the labour market and that serious changes are needed in all elements of the educational process, including the curricula and the closely related textbooks and teaching aids. What does the analysis of studies on curricula say in this respect?
Indeed, the analysis in all its elements registers the need for relatively minor, non-fundamental changes. This is particularly evident in the presentation of the results of the large-scale teacher survey (covering over 18,000 teachers) and the analysed opinion of 210 teachers who participated in the MES working groups, as the analysis states “overall, the teachers surveyed rated the programmes as well structured and working. The majority are of the opinion that the recommended distribution of hours for the types of activities in the subject (teaching of new material, exercises, tests, etc.) proposed in the curriculum is optimal” (p. 4). Parents who participated in the national representative survey expressed the opinion that their children have difficulties at school (nearly half of the parents), but for the majority of them the difficulties are due to distance learning (37%), and to the way teachers teach. At the same time, the percentage of parents who believe that the difficulties are also due to the curricula itself is not small – the curriculum content is large (27.7%), the curriculum content is not adapted to the age of the child (26%), there is no coordination of the material in the different subjects (9.4%). Another large percentage of parents (27.7%) felt that the difficulties were due to the unclear language in the teaching materials.
I.e. there is some discrepancy in the “public order” of parents (1/4 of them think that the curricula lead to serious difficulties) and the views of teachers who are generally satisfied with the curricula. This discrepancy is particularly serious for parents of children in the primary grades, who feel that the curriculum material is too much and not age-appropriate for the children, and on the other hand for primary teachers, who suggest virtually no changes to the curricula for grades 1-4.
The MES analysis also summarises the proposals for changes made, making it clear that these are proposals that will be discussed at the second stage of the process (July-August and possibly September). What are these proposals? Most of them concern minor changes related to moving certain topics from one class to another. There are considerably fewer proposals to move subjects from compulsory to extended or specialised. There are virtually no proposals to drop major topics, only individual elements or certain expected outcomes. For example:
There are a total of 12 proposals for changes in the Bulgarian language and literature curricula. They mainly provide for the swapping of topics between classes. It is proposed, for example, that past verb tenses, participles, adverbs and prepositions be moved from grade V to grade VI, and that lighter topics related to pronouns, homogenous parts of the simple sentence, active and passive vocabulary, paronyms, writing a summary and a business letter be moved down to lower grades or to junior high school. There is an idea that morphemic analysis should not be included in the general education curriculum but should be worked on in the extended curriculum. In literature, there are two proposals – Vazov’s “Levski” from “Epic of the Forgotten” and “Under the Yoke” should be moved from Class X to Class IX, and “My Family and Other Animals” (Darrell) should not be studied in compulsory classes. These changes will not burden the curriculum in any class.
Most of the mathematics subjects are proposed to be moved to the higher class or to the extended preparation. These are, for example, Uniformities in the Plane, Classical Probability, Elements of Stereometry. According to the teachers for credit, rent and quartile should be studied in the extended or in the profiled preparation.
It is proposed that the calculation of simple interest, now taught in Class V, should be taught two years later, and that the skills of constructing a parallelogram and a triangle by various given elements should be required of seventh graders in the extended preparation, not all. Moving the concepts of half-plane and contour of half-plane to the next grade will also be discussed.
Not all fifth-graders need to be able to navigate with a compass and calculate average population density, teachers said. It is suggested that these skills be taught in extended geography and economics along with concepts such as Laurasia, Gondwana, minerals, atmospheric pressure, tides, and the pie chart. Another idea is to teach in upper grades the determination of geographic coordinates by globe and map and the calculation of actual distances using a numerical scale, as well as the concepts of degree grid, latitude and longitude.
There is a proposal to ease the geography and economics curriculum in the first secondary stage as well. Thought will be given to whether concepts such as the President, highly developed and developing countries, energy efficiency, the European Parliament, the European Commission, which are now taught in Grade IX, should be removed from the curriculum in this subject because they are learned earlier in the course of studies and/or through other subjects. The same applies to the concepts studied in Class X, such as origin of relief, origin of minerals, etc.
The least changes are proposed in the curricula of the primary grades. They affect only the physical education and sport and music curricula. (information from MES website)
The change we need?
In practice, the summarised information from the surveys carried out does not propose resolution changes, but rather a slight “realignment”. It is difficult to say that this is due to a lack of ‘public order’. The survey of parents does not indicate the existence of a “resolution situation”, but it does show that not a small number of parents also want a change in the curriculum. The proposed ‘restructuring’ is unlikely to satisfy these parents. Just as importantly, the results of independent studies such as PISA place Bulgaria at the bottom of the functional literacy rankings among EU countries. More serious change is objectively needed.
So far, the process of change initiated by the Ministry of Education half a year ago has been closed primarily within the teachers’ guild and the ministry administrators. The opinion of educators is undoubtedly crucial, but it is a well-known principle in the social sciences that no system could fundamentally change itself without the intervention of external factors as well. At this point, the process of change involves virtually no factors external to the system. Parents’ views on current issues have been explored, but their involvement in the next stages of developing specific curriculum changes is not envisaged. The views of NGOs working in the field of education have not been explored at all. The Ministry of Education promises that it will consider the NGOs’ views on the necessary changes, but this implies ‘passive participation’, whatever that oxymoron means. Broader stakeholder involvement is only envisaged in October at the ‘public consultation’ stage. The well-tested practice of previous public consultations (not only in education, but in all other spheres) strongly indicates that serious changes cannot be adopted at the “public consultation” stage.
It is in everyone’s interest (MES, teachers, parents, others) to open up the process of preparing new curricula as much as possible to parents and experts from the civil sector, as well as to all other stakeholders. Curricula are not a panacea, but they are an important part of the transformation we need. Not to mention that no less important change is needed in textbooks and teaching aids…
Deyan Kolev
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