Новини

On September 28, Education Minister Meglena Kuneva signed the Standard for civil, health, environmental and intercultural education. A month before that - on August 24 - the draft ordinance was announced for public comment. Center for Interethnic Dialogue and Tolerance "Amalipe", along with 24 non-governmental organizations sent proposals to the text. They were included except for one, maybe the most important - a paragraph providing for limitation of school segregation to one educational stage. So the aspirations of civil society to accelerate the breakdown of one of the most hard nut to crack in Bulgarian education - "segregated" schools will have to be postponed or directed to the municipalities.

Standard for intercultural education was introduced for the first time in Bulgarian schools: although within the complex "standard for civil, health, environmental and intercultural education" - SCHEIE. What is offered by the standard and what it fails to propose concerning the development of intercultural perspective and educational integration? Is it by accident that it was the school segregation that was not included in the text? What can and should be done after the adoption of the Ordinance?

Intercultural education: what is offered by the standard?

According to Art. 1 Ordinance on civil, health, environmental and intercultural education sets:

1. The nature and objectives of civic, health, environmental and intercultural education - SCHEIE;

2. The modalities for the implementation of SCHEIE;

3. The framework requirements for learning outcomes in SCHEIE;

4. institutional support policies of SCHEIE.

In accordance with this, art. 3, para. 4 defines the essence of intercultural education as "learning about different dimensions of cultural identities and key features of intercultural relations, forming a positive attitude towards diversity in all areas of human life, as well as acquiring skills and attitudes for constructive interaction in a multicultural environment." .

Art. 4 sets two main goals of the civic, health, environmental and intercultural education (CHEIE), both connected to interculturality:

- Establishment of an autonomous and active person who ... respects the importance of every person in the variety of its identities, recognizes the right and the value of diversity, accepts the equality of all in the common social space; realizes and values his/her cultural identity;

- Operation of any educational institution as an autonomous, active and self-developing community: .. creates a positive learning environment for dialogue between members of different cultural communities depending on their age and competence, including through the forms of student participation and self-government.

Chapter 3 of the Regulation specifies the implementation of CHEIE: at different levels and stages (from pre-school to first high school) and all kinds of school education (educational, extended, profiled, additional and within the day organization of the school day and hours class). Until now intercultural education was realized primarily in primary and secondary schools and partly - in preschools mostly by EТ inclusion of intercultural topics in the subjects of school curriculum and sporadically - within day organization. The regulation provides the possibility of extended training (known until last month as ОЕТ) on the subject "Intercultural Education", including intercultural education in the first school stage in the lesson of the class and developing its capabilities within a day organization and preschooling.

The final version of the standard include the proposal made by Amalipe and other NGOs to introduce a guaranteed minimum supply of CHEIE. New paragraph 4 of Article 8 requires that "Each of the classes in elementary, junior high and high school first offered training in subjects under par. 3 or part of them in accordance with the priorities of the school".

Framework  requirements for CHEIE results are included in Chapter 4 of the Regulation and four appendices. One of them is for outcomes of intercultural education: knowledge, skills and attitudes that the child / student must acquire, grouped into four areas of competence and divided into stages of education - from preschool to first high school. Essentially, these are the first standartized requirements for the results of intercultural education that Bulgarian education system puts.

Chapter 5 of the Regulation aims to formulate institutional policies to support CHEIE. All schools and kindergartens are required to include CHEIE in their strategies and to develop their institutional policies for its implementation, incl. through programs for CHEIE: Art. 15. The final version of the standard include a proposal of Amalipe and 24 other NGOs to introduce specific requirements for policies applying intercultural education. Newly introduced Art. 18 requires:

(1) An integral part of institutional policies aimed at civil, health, environmental and intercultural education, supporting the multicultural environment.

(2) When in the same age group in kindergarten or in the same class at school are enrolled children, respectively students of different ethnicity, it is not allowed to put them into separate groups, respectively classes, based on their ethnicity.

(3) When in places designated by the state or by an additional plan for admission are accepted students from different ethnicity for training in the same class in the same profile or the same profession it is not allowed their separation in classes based on their ethnicity.

(4) When in the same class are enrolled students of the same ethnicity, the school principal together with REI and municipality provide action to create intercultural school forms for joint activity of students of that school and other schools.

The inclusion of this new article should be assessed positively in terms of emphasizing the importance of creating a multicultural environment. The very idea of intercultural education requires educational environment in which different cultures cooperate with each other. At the same time the value added with the text is minimal. Paragraph 2 and 3 repeated texts from art. 99 of the Act on pre-school and school education without any indication of their application - eg. time, concrete steps etc. Paragraph 4 requires intercultural school forms: it was the proposal of the organizations which corresponded to schools located in settlements with students from one ethnic group. It is transferred on segregated public schools, the most important text of the proposal of civil organizations is not included: subparagraph requiring the reduction of the years that students from one multiethnic settlement  spend in monoethnic school environment. Such a text, which focuses on segregation at school level was agreed between the NGOs and the Ministry of Education, but in fact was not included in the Standard.

Why segregation?

Currently, about three-quarters of Roma children are taught in a classroom with Roma students. Usually this leads to a very low quality of education and difficult  socialization. As a result, many of these students drop out and the percentage of Roma young people who continue in secondary schools and universities is too low.

Proof of this is the classification of schools concerning learning difficulties made for the needs of the project "Your lesson". In Category 1 - schools with the most severe disabilities - here are included 36 vocational schools, 25 rural schools and 15 primary or secondary schools from settlements with more than one school (nine of them in Sofia, the other - in Burgas, Plovdiv, Varna and other cities). Of these 15 schools, fourteen can be defined as "segregated Roma" schools since they trained primarily Roma children. These same children achieve significantly higher results in ethnically mixed environment: in many schools included in categories 6 and 7 Roma students have a high, but not dominant percentage, and there really is a multicultural environment.

The absence of multicultural environment in Bulgarian school refers to at least four types of situations: rural schools with a predominant percentage of Roma students for objective demographic reasons (in most villages Bulgarian population is older and childless), schools in Roma neighborhoods in large cities (the so called "primary segregated schools") Schools in urban areas that were ethnically mixed, but today are "Roma", because Bulgarian parents have moved their children to another school and ethnically mixed schools which have classes with only Roma pupils ( "segregated classes"). The new education act explicitly forbids the fourth type through art. 99, para. 4 and art. 62, para. 4 and set guidelines for finding solutions to the remaining three situations. It is clear that these decisions will be different. Eg. It is not a case of segregation when there is only one school in a village, and the problem should be  solved by systematic inter-school activities, which would involve Roma and BUlgarian students. Stopping the process of secondary segregation is achievable with a combination of municipal and school policies. In the case of primary segregated schools in Roma neighborhoods it is possible to think about reducing the stages of education that students acquire in them and systemic inter-school activities with the so called host schools. I.e. there are series of institutional policies at the level of school / kindergarten, inter-school and municipal policies that can and should be taken. 

Unfortunately, the added value of the standard in terms of overcoming school segregation is too low. It reiterates the prohibition of formation of segregated classes and requires multicultural extracurricular activities. There are no clues to tackle the worst forms of segregation - the school one. Segregated schools in Roma neighborhoods and increasing cases of "secondary segregated" schools remain open "wounds" in the Bulgarian education.

After the SCHEIE: what comes next?

Despite the shortcomings, particularly in terms of school segregation, the standard offers opportunities for development of intercultural education. The text itself is not enough imperative and for the realization of selected options is needed action in several ways:

1. The institutional policies for introducing intercultural education: par. 4 of Art. 15 of the Regulation requires each educational institution to develop a program for CHEIE and art. 19 - set up a permanent team to support CHEIE. In addition, Art. 3 of the transitional provisions set a deadline of three months after publication of the Regulation, within which educational institutions have to change their rules and formulate their institutional policies to support CHEIE.

The required program should not become one of the dozens of programs produced "one after another", after the adoption of the new education law. Anyway, it should not be seen solely as a program for school rituals and symbols. It should include texts related to the introduction of various forms of intercultural education (extended and additional training in mandatory training sessions on interest,the lesson of the class) to avoid segregated classes, deadlines for the conversion of segregated classes and etc. It is needed for school teams to support CHEIE to include teachers, implementing successfully intercultural education as well as parents and students;

2. Concerning the creation of a multicultural environment: REI and MES should collect information about the existence of segregated classes and groups and to support schools and kindergartens to implement the Act and standards, without leading to "outflow" of students with Bulgarian ethnic identity. Schools and kindergartens should be supported also by the relevant municipalities and NGOs to avoid secondary segregation.

REI and Ministry of Education should also assist schools and kindergartens, which educate pupils / children of one ethnicity in organizing intercultural school forms, ie System-school activities involving children and students of other ethnicities. Project "Your Lesson" could be a good opportunity for this, but we need it to introduce additional standard for inter-school activities;

3. The introduction of various forms of intercultural education: Schools need to implement the requirement of Art. 8, para. 4 of the Regulation, by ensuring teaching in any class of primary, lower secondary and upper first stage of subjects of civil, health, environmental and intercultural education. This process should be followed and supported by REI and MES. Particularly important will be the creative support of experts and authors in the field of intercultural education that should prepare educational materials and programs for these items.