Developing the Quality of Bulgarian Education

Petar Balkanski

National Institute for Education, Bulgaria

Introduction

Education in Bulgaria is undergoing a process of rapid change based upon new value orientations and increasing diversity guaranteed by the legislation of 1991. This includes a cautious policy involving a decrease in centralisation and increasing autonomy for schools. Of basic importance is ensuring the quality of the education provided. It therefore has become necessary to establish national education standards, and to create common mechanisms with respect to the estimation of student achievement, the grading of teachers’ performance and the effects of innovations.

Defining the Quality of Education

‘Quality of education’ is a complicated and multi-level concept, reflected in a variety of approaches to its definition, two of which are used in the evaluation of the quality of education in Bulgaria.
The first is based on the idea of ‘suitability for purpose’, i.e. the degree of correspondence between outcomes and previously formulated standards: to what extent does the evidence suggest that predefined standards are being achieved? This approach is based on the ‘documentary philosophy’ for establishing the quality of education, and focuses upon formal compliance. It does not explore the deeper education levels, those elements which in fact create quality, but is much more suitable for the requirements of administrative control, accounting and issues concerning legality. At this stage of the development of Bulgarian education, this ‘normative’ approach is a basic one in the evaluation, the control and the management of the quality of the education.
It finds its practical expression in legislation and regulations governing schools, especially the Public Education Law of 1991. Thus Article 16 provides for the elaboration and confirmation of 18 categories of state-prescribed educational requirements or standards.¹ These are in their early stage of elaboration. Of paramount importance is the standard of education evaluation.
The approach to quality can be illustrated in the way in which the law defines requirements to ensure the quality of education: by stating the obligatory general education minimum for the various subjects, grades and levels, notwithstanding the type of school, and creating a system for diagnostics and visiting teachers’ and professors’ evaluation of the quality of education by standard tests. This law makes it possible for each school to approve its own ‘school study plan’. It allows the inclusion in the school study plans of three groups of subjects – obligatory, optional and free choice – as well as the obligatory study programme for one academic year, which varies from 90% for the first grade to 55% for the 12th grade. The elaboration of the school study plans is based on the state education standards and the National Study Plan.
The second approach for establishing quality rests on the ‘liberal philosophy’ of quality, emphasising the processes that lead to quality education, and allowing each school to define its own quality requirements, taking into account its respective context, resources and conditions. A major priority is to do all this in a transparent way.
This ‘liberal’ philosophy of quality is ensured by the implementation of an internal system for control and maintenance of quality and an external system for institutional accreditation of schools. Rather than emphasising formal procedures, the approach looks to achieving the best study results. It is a radical approach, one with a view to the future rather than the contemporary or the past. This supposes that quality is about a continual improvement in outputs (the object, the product, the service). It is dynamic, the aggregate of ways and possibilities for improvement of results. In that respect quality is not static, constrained by the given and stated norms and standards, but is a dynamic event. The liberal approach to ensuring education quality presupposes and requires the creation of reliable system for control and management.

Quality Management and Control

The national strategy for quality management and control of schools prescribes monitoring of the education process by permanent diagnostics, estimation and accreditation based on objective quality and effectiveness data, combined with internal and external administrative control, revision and inspection. The education monitoring is based on analyses of the specific context within which learning takes place, the aims and requirements set, students’ achievements in mastering the obligatory subjects; of the school organization and the resources available to students, the teachers’ professional competence, the school’s external relationships and of the cost effectiveness of the schools.
The monitoring is a combination of external/internal, programme and institutional control of the education processes and results. The external control is to be performed by national evaluations and examinations, which are seen as providing the possibility for comparison of results and achievements. Internal control is seen as a permanent process of the diagnosis of students’ performance and of the school’s development. These are to be achieved without external interference, and involve the implementation of the self-evaluation principle, self-regulation, implementing standard criteria, norms, procedures and technologies; thus allowing the schools to participate actively in the development and implementation of educational purposes, values, norms and standards.
The management of the quality of school-level education according to the accepted strategy is looked on as control of the process of the management of education by creating a relevant database and implementation of statistical methods to facilitate the taking of managerial decisions on all levels of the education system. This involves:

• emphasising objectivity in evaluation, which should be valued by public opinion,
• responding with adequate education products and services to the requirements of the education market,
• informing teachers, students and their parents about the price of quality education,
• foreseeing the possible negative effects of launching initiatives connected with raising the quality of education,
• being ready to make the necessary corrections in case of such negative effects, and
• having technologies, procedures and mechanisms for education quality control by external and internal diagnostics, accreditation and examinations.

The final purpose of school quality management is to ensure adequate knowledge, abilities and competence on the part of the graduates from schools, and at the same time to satisfy the requirements for valuable school products and services. The education quality is checked in real conditions by generally accepted and valid standards, criteria and methods of estimation of the students’ achievements. The education quality control satisfies the necessity of permanent objective examination of the study results, and on the other hand creates a dynamic database for comparisons of the quality of education. Only by applying standard estimation of the schools’ achievements can there be reliable, valid and objective data concerning the quality of education and information for the management of the school and of the education process at macro and micro levels.

The Assessment of Students

The assessment of student achievement is an inseparable part of the total study process and follows the continuing development of the students from the moment they enter the school until they graduate from it. There hardly exists any other pedagogical mechanism which has so great an impact on the person’s destiny and development, on intellectual potential, talents and abilities as the appraisal of his or her achievements.
The traditional system of student assessment in Bulgarian schools defended and guaranteed the teachers’ independence and supported justice and the teachers’ morale. At the same time if suffered serious, historically accumulated and to some extent irreparable deficiencies, which prevented society from obtaining a true picture of the students’ achievements as a whole in order to control the quality of education or to show the specific school effect in the development of teaching activity. The traditional practice in Bulgarian education is to a great extent restricted to student evaluation by the teacher, according to his or her own responsibility and subjectivity, showing in this way students’ progress or failure.
For over 120 years in Bulgarian education there has been in force the numeric (1-6) system for the evaluation of students’ abilities and knowledge. This system has the advantage of being ‘simplified’ but it does not allow the evaluation of the progress of the students, nor does it take into consideration their gradual development.

Popular Perceptions of the Quality of Education

Certain ideas concerning the quality of the education held by people at large are reported in a research report Bulgarian Society Attitude to Changes in Education conducted by the sociological agency MBMD in March, 1999. The research surveyed about 1168 persons over 15 years of age. Public estimation of the quality of the secondary education was judged from answers to the following question: "How do you estimate the quality of … ?". Tables 1 and 2 below show the summarised answers of several questions from the survey, which are connected to the quality of different stages and profiles of education: elementary, primary, secondary general, secondary professional and totally for the secondary education; as well as their estimate of the quality of the education material used in the various education stages. The answers were divided into three groups: the group of people without children/students, the group having children/students and the total group. The answers were summarised in two coefficients: Coefficient of the Education Quality (CEQ) and the Coefficient of the Quality of the Education Material (CQEM). The minimum value of the coefficients is 0, and the maximum 1. They were fixed after rating the answers: positive: as 1, almost positive; 0.75, equally positive and negative; 0.50; almost negative – 0.25; negative – 0.

Table 1 – Coefficient of Education Quality (CEQ) by Stages and Groups of People

Strages of Education	Total for the Country (CEQ)	People without Children/Students	People with Children/Students
Elementary Education (grades 1-4)	0.59	0.62	0.61
Primary Education (grades 5-8)	0.54	0.60	0.57
Secondary General Education (grades 9-12)	0.53	0.57	0.64
Secondary vocational education (grades 9-12)	0.53	0.57	0.62
Total for Secondary Education (grades 1-12)	0.58	0.62	0.60

 

Table 2 – Coefficient of Quality of the Education Material (CQEM) by Stages and Groups of People

Stage of Education	Total for the Country Population (CQEM)	Total for People with Children/Students (CQEM)
Elementary Education (grades 1-4)	0.51	0.71
Primary education (grades 5-8)	0.50	0.67
Secondary general education (grades 9-12)	0.47	0.58

The results of this research suggest that participants in the study gave a positive view of the quality of education in schools. However, many research studies show that when it comes to evaluation of education quality, mass opinion is not reliable or objective. It is highly uninformed and incompetent, full of emotional elements and is influenced by illusion and mythology. The obvious conclusion is that the estimation of the quality of education is a specific professional activity. It should be done by professional methods using scientifically-based standards, criteria and data and a strict procedure.
The critical attitude to the current evaluation system in education brings with it the necessity of its reformation by the implementation of inter-school education quality maintenance systems and a mechanism for education quality control at macro level. We have called it ‘national evaluation’, known as standard, independent or external estimation of students’, teachers’ and school’s achievements. Below there is shown only the strategy of the national evaluation of the students’ achievements in secondary education.

Nation-Wide Estimation of Quality

In the quality management strategy elaborated by the National Institute of Education there is used the expression ‘national estimation’. It comprises several main elements:

• evaluation of quality is performed by estimation of the students’ achievements applying generally valid, standard methods;
• the results should be as objective as possible, valid and comparable, no matter the conditions of education and the character of the teaching and the students;
• the standard methods of assessment were constructed following certain state requirements (education standards) for the respective subjects, grades, stages and levels of education;
• the estimation of the students’ achievements is performed by external, independent specialists according to previously approved criteria, indicators and units of measure and there is no possibility of subjective influence; and they are comparable on regional, national and international level.

In the last few years there have been some partial experiments conducted on student assessment, focusing on various tests and pilot projects for the evaluation of students’ achievements. Following the initiative of the Ministry of Education and Science, in 1994 there was founded the National Tests Centre in secondary education. It became part of the National Institute of Education. The development of this Centre has been stopped as a result of various changes and lack of resources.
In process is a pilot project for the analysis of 8th grade students’ achievements (at the end of primary education) in Bulgarian language, mathematics, applied sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) and social sciences (history and geography). This is being accomplished through the implementation of standard methods and the creation of a model for carrying out a national examination for selection of students who wish to study in profiled high schools.
Although small, the accumulated experience of standard external evaluation of the students’ achievements and the carrying out of ‘external examinations’ convinces us that evaluation is a complex professional activity. It cannot be performed without qualified personnel and without creating a new attitude and competence in the teachers. This process brings forth the necessity of substantial personnel, material and financial resources and cannot be performed out of the context of the European quality requirements. The positive effects of putting into force this quality-oriented programme will appear only if this activity becomes permanent and is performed systematically according to a specific scientific technology, supported by information and an organizational mechanism guaranteed by appropriate legislation, as well as by following general requirements, procedures and regulations. At the same time the national, external, standard estimation cannot replace the internal one – current, term, annual – which is performed by the teachers and creates a viable, inter-school system for the control and maintenance of education quality. These two sub-systems mutually complement and enrich each other.

A Strategy for a National Estimation of Student Achievement

The strategy for a national estimation of the students’ achievements comprises of the following basic ideas:

1. The design and construction of standard ways of conducting national measures of student achievements in certain subjects by completion of each stage of schooling. The evaluation is performed by external independent appraisers using representative samples of students in the 4th, 8th and 12th grades.
2. The creation of generally valid technologies, rules and norms for conducting annual school diagnostics for stating the level of students’ readiness to enter certain classes for differentiated education, according their individual development and apprehension of the school study plan and programmes, in order to establish an adequate organization of the school process. This type of diagnosis is performed by the teachers from the respective schools.
3. Construction of a standard method for conducting the annual national examinations of students who wish to continue their education in foreign language schools, in mathematics high schools, profiled secondary general education schools and professional schools, upon successful completion of the 7th grade.
4. Construction of standard methods for the conduct of state matriculation examinations for students successfully completing the 12th grade, on subjects approved by law, in order to be granted a diploma of completion of secondary education and to be allowed to continue their education at the next stage, which requires high school and vocational qualifications. The evaluation is performed at school level by school examination commissions and independent appraisers.
5. The creation of specialized methods and tools to be used by the teachers for diagnosis and the provision of an internal system for control and maintenance of the quality of education at school level.
6. The creation of a viable organizational and professional mechanism for the systematic conduct of standard assessments and examinations, consisting of two mutually connected and at the same time relatively separate structures:

• co-ordination and control structures, corresponding to the organization structure for management of the schools, and
• professional structures, consisting of the National Institute for Education and the Centre for Education Estimation, independent external teachers – appraisers, teachers – specialists in methods of assessment and the academic personnel of the university laboratories for the estimation of the education quality.

The strategy for national estimation of education quality using diagnostics, accreditation and examinations is a part of the general system for evaluation in secondary education. It includes also evaluation and attestation of teaching personnel, as well as of the schools themselves. It does not substitute for, but enriches, the inter-school system with new elements for the control and maintenance of the education quality.
Establishing this strategy for national assessment, together with the state education requirements, have their priority and place in the state policies for the development of a modern education system. A five-year transition period for final implementation of the national estimation of education quality is anticipated. During this period there continue the realization of the separate pilot projects and other activities included in the programme.
The application of this strategy of quality assurance will guarantee quality at school, regional, national and international levels. In this way Bulgarian education shall comply with European requirements for the application of common comprehensible mechanisms for education control, the recognition of educational and professional qualifications, to assist in educational and manpower mobility within Europe.

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