What are the key educational issues of importance to policy makers in Bulgaria?
Policy makers have invested heavily in TEL within Bulgarian education systems over the past decade.
The development of policies is a constant interplay between the central, local and regional governments and education providers.
National Policy – the government plays a prominent decision-making role in developing, planning, implementing and coordinating ICT policies. In some cases the responsibilities are shared between ministries, agencies and levels of administration. The main focus in national policy is to help improve education (and use of ICT) through a more co-ordinated approach to policy making. The government launched initiatives for the development of Education Technologies having as its main stated goals:
the provision of infrastructure to schools (PCs, Internet connections, etc.)
the improvement of teachers' professional skills in using ICT.
the improvement of effectiveness of learning and teaching methods and content
the promotion of the use of ICT and multimedia tools among students
building partnerships among schools and between schools and communities;
developing electronic learning resources (content) as well as electronic services for administration.
Local Policy - The municipalities play a crucially important role in funding and maintaining educational institutions. They have to ensuare that all involved in the educational process will carry out national policy.
Institutional Policy - TEL needs to be integrated into curricula and where national guidlines fail teachers have to ensure that such integration is enabled themselves. Networking between universities requires a set of defined responsibilities, which is new and difficult to arrange for many institutions.
International Policy – to improve education through a more co-ordinated approach to policy making. European projects and policies may help teachers to develop their own strategies towards TEL.
Educational issues and policy makers in Bulgaria - more in-depth detail
University education
The integration of the modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) into the Bulgarian higher education system is, to a great extent, providing solutions to the problem of satisfying the growing educational aspirations of Bulgarian society (providing access to quality higher education for all) in a reasonable amount of time with the use of a reasonable level of resources. For these reasons, the use of the ICTs in higher education are an important element in institutional and governmental policy in the process of modernizing and democratising the sector.
In order to overcome the considerable lag in the ICT field, in May 2004 the national initiative “i-Bulgaria” was started. Its aim is to accelerate in Bulgaria the process of reaching the average indices of Information Society development in the EU. The work in the frames of this programme is concentrated on five significant projects, three of which are crucial for the Bulgarian education and science and in which implementation the Bulgarian government (the Ministry of Transport and Communications and the Ministry of Education and Science, in particular) have already invested considerable resources:
“i-Class” – project for computerisation of Bulgarian schools;
“i-University” – project for building computer laboratories and websites for e-learning in the state universities;
“i-NET” – project for establishment of information highway between the Bulgarian universities and scientific institutes, as well as make connections with the European research networks
The project i-University aims:
To establish high-technology labs for distance education in all Bulgarian higher education institutions and many research institutions
Equip about 120 labs with over 2000 computers, servers, multimedia projection systems and other technical equipment in 37 universities and 40 research centres
Development of curricula and projects for further infrastructure growth and stimulating digital content creation
The project i-Net aims:
To connect all Bulgarian universities and research centres through a united high-speed Internet network
Establish a connection with pan-European and international scientific network initiatives -GÉANT, Internet 2
Development of the network for new services
Enable equal conditions for all universities
How prepared is Bulgaria in implementing Technology Enhanced Learning?
The data presented below shows the readiness of Bulgarian Higher Education Institutions of implementation of TEL.
According to the State Registry of higher schools there are:
49 Higher Educational Institutions in Bulgaria (state & private)
10 Colleges and Higher Schools
39 Universities and Academies: Technical, economic, military, arts, medical etc.
Approximately 228,500 students in Bulgaria for the period 2003-2004:
17 of these institutions train less than 1000 students
32 cover less than 5000 students
Only 7 of them provide training for more than 10,000 students.
The model of distance education was implemented in the Bulgarian Higher Education System in 2004 and the Bulgarian government started the initiative “Virtual University”.
According to IDG research investigation
31 universities training 145 600 students.
24 with ICT education.
14 500 students in technologies
94% universities have a strategy or in the process of development of such strategy for using ICT in education
Infrastructure
29% - developed infrastructure
71% - partially developed infrastructure
Leading Universities:
American University - Blagoevgrad (private) - 26 PC per 100 students.
National Military Academy (state): 16 PC per 100 students.
Internet connectivity
65%– connection speed over 1Mbps.
90%: local network.
Campus-networks (territory of student hostels): 26%.
Local networks for different departments : 76%
Information systems
80-90% of Higher Educational Institutions are developing Management information systems at different levels
68% using e-Learning platforms
19% using e-Learning platforms implemented by their institution
Professional and vocational education
About 18% of people have access to computers at home, and 12% have Internet access at home. There is one special difference in Bulgaria related to other European countries – the use of computers and Internet in special computer clubs. Now more than 40% of the people are using such public clubs for the access to computers and Internet. There are several big funding programmes, both national and international, helping to offer cheap such services for any interested Bulgarian citizen.
Also three companies are offering very cheap integrated access to Cable TV and Internet via satellite technology. Their services are especially useful for small households in villages and other rural areas.
The general tendency is for very fast increasing of the numbers of people using both personal computers and Internet at home. Even without any significant statistical analysis of these numbers in the last two years, we can make comparison with the rapid increase of the number of mobile users in Bulgaria in the last three years:
2003: 32 %
2004: 57%
2005: 75%
We can expect very near figures, also having in mind that most of the mobile users also can use Internet through their mobile phones.
Computers and schools
MES is responsible mainly for the implementation of digital literacy in all educational organisations – schools, universities and many others. For this purpose they launched the i-School project, aiming at the end of 2006 each Bulgarian school to have at least 10 modern computers (the ration should be 12 pupils to one computer), with very fast Internet connection.
As a first stage of national strategy for integration of ICT in school in 2005, 1000 teachers were trained to support equiped school computer labs. As second stage of the strategy during 2005 and 2006 year, 40 000 teachers in all school subjects were trained in order they to posses the basic computer literacy and to be able to use computers and Internet in their teaching.
Ministry of Education and Science organize a project for developing electronic textbooks and manuals for all subjects in Bulgarian school, which will be freely available for all the Bulgarian citizens through the newly developed educational portals.
Primary education
From the current 2006 year all schools will offer new ICT courses as elective courses. There are national standards, curriculum and educational programmes, describing the content of these courses. All other courses are highly stimulated to include ICT elements in the process of education.
Secondary education
Since the current 2006 year, ICT becomes compulsory subject for all schools in Bulgaria starting from 5 klas. There are national standards, curriculum, and educational programmes describing the content of ICT courses. All ICT teachers were re-trained for being able to each these new courses. All other teachers were also re-trained how best to use ICT in their teaching.
Educational management
All school managers were trained to use new contemporary ICT tools for the management of their schools. New national-wide software was developed and is compulsory to be used.
Lifelong learning
The State Agency for Information Technology and Communications (SAITC) is responsible for the implementation of training in the field of digital literacy. SAITC is mostly related to the training of the government administration, as well as for providing of access and digital literacy training for the rural areas and small towns and villages. For this purpose the funded the “i-Zone” project, aiming to build more than 500 clubs with computer rooms and Internet access in almost all small towns and villages in Bulgaria. Now they opened more than 200 such clubs, and trained the personal in order to be able to train the citizens in base computer literacy.
Distance education
It is developing faster and faster, with implementation of new programmes at Bulgarian universities for distance education in almost all subjects. National competitions for developing e-learning materials for distance education was organized in 2005 for the first time, with great success.
Educational research
It is mainly performed at Universities, but also there are national research units dedicated to performing large national research studies related to all educational
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