site.btaFounder of Association of Bulgarian Schools Abroad: Number of Bulgarian Schools Abroad Continues to Increase, They Need to Change How They Teach

The founder and former chair of the Association of Bulgarian Schools Abroad (ABSA), Irina Boteva – Vladikova, says that the number of Bulgarian schools abroad continues to increase, though not as fast as some ten years ago. She says in an interview for the London-based Bulgarian-language newspaper BG BEN that these schools have a different mission than schools in Bulgaria and need to change how they teach. 

Bulgarian schools abroad teach Bulgarian language and literature, as well as country-specific subjects such as history and geography, based on the regular curricula of schools in Bulgaria. Classes are taught on weekends.

Since 2003, Irina Boteva-Vladikova has been the principal of the Bulgarian School of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Vienna, Austria. She has had numerous initiatives aiming to promote the teaching of Bulgarian language and literature in Bulgarian schools abroad. She has been distinguished by Bulgaria on a number of occasions for her role in mother-tongue education abroad.

Here are the highlights of the BG BEN interview with Boteva-Vladikova:

• It is encouraging that the number of students in Bulgarian schools abroad is increasing, but the coverage among children in the Bulgarian communities remains low. According to Education Ministry statistics, as of 2022 there have been a total of 373 Bulgarian schools in 43 countries on six continents. If we assume that children are 10% of our diaspora, which is estimated at over 2 million, we are faced with the impressive number of 200,000 school-age children, of which about 35,000 children aged 4, students from grades 1 to 12 and prospective students are currently covered by Bulgarian schools abroad, which is 17.5% of the total. The statistics of the Education Ministry shows that in 12 years the number of children in Bulgarian schools has increased almost 10 times.
• The number of Bulgarian schools abroad continues to increase, but not as fast as ten years ago. The opening of new schools is a good thing when it happens in places where there are none yet. But unfortunately, there is also an unfair practice when this happens in the immediate vicinity of an existing Bulgarian school. In the UK, and in London in particular, the number of Bulgarian schools has already reached a point where the Education Ministry in Sofia have found it necessary to impose restrictions and prohibit the opening of new schools on tax-payers' money.
• The specific thing about teaching Bulgarian language and literature to Bulgarian students abroad is that these are children who grow up, live and learn in a foreign language environment. On week days, they go to regular schools in the country they live in and have totally different curricula. Increasingly, students in the Bulgarian schools are learning Bulgarian as a foreign language. The current curriculum and content offered in literature is utterly outdated, incomprehensible and, most importantly, mostly redundant for our students.
• A proposal to increase the number of classes will not solve the existing problems and will even compound them. We must not forget that our students attend regular school during the week and then go to a Bulgarian school on Saturdays or Sundays. The teaching time must be efficiently allocated and teaching content provided in such a way that it can be easily absorbed by our students - rather than having colleagues galloping through a new topic every class. There needs to be practice time - time for what is being taught to be understood.
• If we want to see young Bulgarians returning to their homeland, we need to unite the efforts of all competent institutions. It is necessary to prepare a working model and conditions for Bulgaria to receive them. All this requires work in unity and without partisan bias.
• We are satisfied that there has been a change in the policy of the State and that the education of Bulgarians living and studying abroad has become an important priority in it, and this is a sure investment in the future.
• The third biggest accomplishment of the Association of Bulgarian Schools Abroad - after the co-funding of Bulgarian schools abroad by the Education Ministry and the recognition of our work in the Preschool and School Education Act - is the submission of an ABSA petition to the European Parliament for protecting the so-called "small languages" such as Bulgarian. The petition was very successful and united Bulgarian representatives of all political parties in the European Parliament in the name of a national cause.
• Despite the text achieved in the EU Council Recommendation, we hope to find a way to continue work on this and see the recommendation become a common rule for European countries on the issue of assessment and validation of language proficiency. We hope that, together with MEPs and the Ministers of Education of all the countries concerned, we will keep up the pressure until we are sure that there will be a practical solution and implementation of its text.