Of the 476 announced positions for school directors, only about half were filled at the beginning of the school year.
This was announced to the BNR by the director of the capital's 51st SU "Elisaveta Bagryana". Asen Alexandrov, chairman of the Association of Principals in Secondary Education.
According to him, the state should organize courses for the candidates for directors:
"Six-month courses, perhaps, before appearing in a competition. Firstly, to assess whether this profession is for them, secondly - to prepare better. This is the case in a number of countries. By passing these courses, they receive the status of director candidate. Sort of like a qualification you need to have before applying to be a director. It is very difficult to go straight from teacher to principal - these are completely different responsibilities and for this reason either there are not enough candidates or they do not manage to do well enough. We need to think about this issue".
Aleksandrov emphasized that school principals in Bulgaria have the most rights and responsibilities compared to other EU countries:
"To hire and fire, budget management, learning process management, communication with parents. In other countries these responsibilities are separated. ... And yet, the director's profession is not so attractive against the background of these responsibilities, because the salary is about 20% more than that of teachers. That's why I say that such personnel should be prepared, and not rely on finding natural talents.
In order to improve education, we need to change some things, stated Alexandrov and commented on the upcoming changes in the tasks for the National External Assessment in the 4th grade, with the goal being that they be practically oriented, and therefore the intention of the Ministry of Education is during this school year to replace dictation with a text editing task.
"The opinion about this change is different. ... Whether something is in the exam or not does not prevent it from developing. I would say that this is not a bad idea. ... Obviously, the intended change will improve students' skills to think more critically. The efforts of their teachers will also be directed towards this", he commented and specified that, for him, "the deeper reform is in the grades we give to students, to calculate what life skills - from those that employers are also looking for - have acquired".
In the show "Sunday 150" Tsveta Stoyanova, child psychologist and career consultant, comments that students have a lot of information from various media and social networks, but the question is not that they know something, but what they do and how they do it, whether they understand that this affects their them and others:
"The essential thing is that they do not possess those necessary life skills with which they could present themselves on the public stage, earn and assert themselves without violating the rights of others.
In her words, the role of the teacher is very important, "who takes the children, to be able to bring them together and create the rules and norms that are suitable for the given class - according to the character and characteristics of the children in it.
p>