1 EDUCATION REFORM in BULGARIA a Study in Failure
1 EDUCATION REFORM IN BULGARIA A study in failure Evgenii Dainov Introduction Recent experience, as well as the increasingly voluminous literature on “delayed” reform, tell researchers and reformers something relatively simple, yet disturbing. Many countries have started or will be starting reforms; quite a number of these countries have failed, are failing or will fail in this attempt. Some will fail roundly. Others will fail partially and will move along with a heavy limp, never certain when system failure may occur. Usually, the literature deals with issues of economic reform1 and finds the culprit in politics. This makes research applicable to other fields, where politics is paramount and particularly, “second generation” reforms, such as education, which require restructuring of institutions – who, of course, resist it. Even partial failures here have significant consequences. The awareness that something was terribly wrong with Bulgarian education came only after 2000, after a decade of self-congratulatory myths and in the face of consequences, which could not be easily explained away. First, a mismatch between skills attained and skills needed became obvious. Employer organisations complained that they were increasingly unable to find Bulgarian nationals to fill mid- level managerial positions, and were forced to import staff from abroad at significant cost. A representative study, carried out by Alpha Research, a major polling agency, in 2004 revealed that only 38 per cent of employers in Bulgaria thought that the education system provided the young with the skills they were looking for. 2 Second, preformance levels dropped. A series of international studies revealed, by 2003 that, while Bulgarians performed well at the level of primary education (1-4th grade), after that figures were little short of disastrous.
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