Bulgarian child welfare and education reforms

Bulgaria is navigating various reforms and challenges concerning child welfare, education, and juvenile justice.

The Ministry of Education and Science proposed reforms to standardize early childhood development tracking and enhance support for students with special educational needs (SEN). These measures include a unified national methodology for kindergartens to monitor progress and identify language deficits, alongside revised roles for resource teachers and social workers to improve inclusive education.

Recent discussions among educators, directors, and professors have focused on the proposed Ordinance on Preschool Education. Deputy Minister Tanya Pancheva stated that introducing a unified toolkit to track early childhood development aims to “support teachers and provide a consistent framework through clear indicators,” replacing the current fragmented system of varying criteria.

In secondary education, administrators are preparing for changes to the National External Assessment for 10th-grade students, which will integrate history questions into the Bulgarian language and literature exam. Additionally, the ‘money follows the student’ funding model remains a point of debate. While some school administrators note that the delegated budget system disadvantages smaller institutions, they argue that competition is beneficial and suggest the state should provide targeted additional funding to smaller schools rather than abolishing the current model.

Concurrently, the country faces scrutiny over juvenile justice and child protection. The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee has criticized government proposals to increase criminal penalties for juvenile delinquency, arguing that such punitive measures contradict international human rights standards. Additionally, the State Agency for Child Protection has reported concerning trends, including extreme cases of early pregnancy and high school dropout rates.