Bulgarian Education Minister: Teachers’ salaries will go up by about 15 per cent on September 1

The salaries of teachers in Bulgaria will be increased by about 15 per cent as of September 1 2017, the country’s new Education Minister Krassimir Vulchev said on May 7.

Speaking to Bulgarian National Radio a few days after taking office as a member of Prime Minister Boiko Borissov’s new coalition government, Vulchev said that the ministry would carry out the governance programme pledge of doubling teachers’ salaries by the end of the cabinet’s four-year term.

Vulchev said that it was important to motivate teachers in remote and small settlements.

He said that the financial incentives given to municipalities would be scrapped, which he said would create opportunities for the opening of new educational institutions.

“My opinion is that in almost all municipalities the school network has reached its limit of optimization,” Vulchev said.

The governance programme agreed on by Borissov’s GERB party and the nationalist United Patriots includes, regarding other steps in education, “decisive measures” to lower dropout rates.

The document also foresees increasing entrepreneurship skills among school pupils and more sport at schools, to bolster health and to deter aggression.

A report by the EU’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency said that in 2015/16, the average gross annual salary of a teacher in Bulgaria was the equivalent of 3681 euro. Teachers in Bulgaria are about the lowest-paid in Europe.

Bulgaria has a school dropout rate of about 13.4 per cent, higher than the EU average of 11 per cent.

(Photo: Marco Michelini/freeimages.com)

/Politics

Comments

comments

The Sofia Globe staff

The Sofia Globe - the Sofia-based fully independent English-language news and features website, covering Bulgaria, the Balkans and the EU. Sign up to subscribe to sofiaglobe.com's daily bulletin through the form on our homepage. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=32709292