The Minister of Education and Science Krasimir Valchev was a special guest of the first course of Class 2020 of the Bulgarian School of Politics. In front of the new trainees – MPs from different political parties, a deputy minister, a chairman of a municipal council, municipal councilors, representatives of various non-governmental organizations and business, Minister Valchev spoke about the challenges facing Bulgarian education.

“Education is a major system that we will rely on in the coming decades,” the Minister said, adding that education should make the transition from the classroom system to the future, where new skills will be needed. Krasimir Valchev noted that today’s students will be active in the labor market over the next 40-50 years when we enter the era of artificial intelligence, which means not only changes in the way we learn, but also in what we learn.

Minister Valchev also addressed some of the problems in the education system today. According to him, the problem of children not attending school is not only socio-economic but also socio-cultural. At present, all social benefits that can be linked to a child’s school attendance are tied, but the challenge to the system remains. One of the reasons is that more and more parents have income from work at home or abroad and do not rely so much on social benefits.

Krasimir Valchev also commented on the problem of the aging of teachers in our country and noted that in the world of global communications, they are expected to be more inspirers, not just knowledge transducers.

In the following discussion, the participants in this year’s BSoP’s National Program asked Minister Valchev many questions. They were interested in from which budget – municipal or state the funds for the free kindergartens will come, the need for dual education, the need and the opportunities to reduce the number of universities in Bulgaria and others.

Before welcoming the Minister of Education at the end of the third training day of the first course, the trainees listened to lectures and worked on tasks related to crisis and conflict management. Lecturer was Ivelin Nikolov, expert in conflict management and editor-in-chief of the Duma newspaper.