15 years since the destruction of the first charter school in Bulgaria

Special thanks to Svetlina Nancheva for her help in preparing this article.

If anyone is wondering why the Bulgarian education system is failing compared to the others, let them stop and read this – during the entire period of the so-called “transition”, all the projects that were leading innovations at the time, not only locally, but also globally, were ruined. Probably everyone remembers the system of Acad. Blagovest Sendov. Or they remember that Bulgaria was one of the first countries to introduce mass training in informatics and the use of computers for the needs of various subjects in its high schools (for a quick reference, to see what the situation is today - as of this year, informatics is mandatory only in mathematical high schools, only in grade 8). In today's story I will tell you about one of these innovations in our education, which is less known to the public, but, like all the others, it was completely ruined by attempts to centrally equalize all schools to work according to a common state template.

151 SOUPI in Sofia was established in 1990 by a team of many enthusiastic experts headed by Yuri Andzhekarski. It is the first original charter school in Bulgaria. From 1990 to 2002, it operated and developed as something similar to what we should soon see in Bulgaria as an “innovative school” according to the “new” terminology of the Ministry of Education and Science. In its best period, the school educated over 1,600 students and employed 250 teachers!

What were the innovations of this school?

Let's not be dry and approach with more pragmatic information. Many of the things that politicians today loudly proclaim as reforms invented by them were actually implemented back in the 1990s in 151 SOUPI. Here is a short list of the most basic concepts that distinguished this school from the others:

• The education of children from grades 5 to 12 was carried out in groups of up to 18 students and in streams of up to 40. The smaller size of the groups (in "normal" schools, classes regularly exceed 25) contributed to significantly more individualized learning;
• The school had 100% electronic school documentation. For example, the children did not have notebooks, but everything was recorded in an electronic diary. There were also no paper diaries and many other paper things. Parents could receive a list of grades and absences of students through printouts on a printer every week. Later, software was developed (by a student from the PPS profile) through which this information could be sent as SMS to parents.
• At the high school level, students specialized in various specialties, 13 in number: Law, Administrative and Business Management (according to the program of Prof. M. Mitropolitski), Tourism Organization, Publishing Activities and Mass Communications, Software Products and Systems, Home Pedagogy, Health Prevention with Natural Means, Clothing Design, Artistic Textiles, Interior Design, Artistic Ceramics, Theater and Audiovisual. The curricula in vocational training were closely integrated with general education - there was always a strong emphasis on inter-subject connections. Admission to the profiles after the 7th grade was through independent exams, outside of the general standardized exams in BEL and mathematics, and for each profile the exam covered specific tasks related to the topic of the profile. In all profiles, professionals from practice and established university professors were periodically attracted as guest lecturers in profile disciplines.
• The weekly school schedule in junior high school and high school was not cyclical, i.e. it did not repeat every week. In this way, it was possible to teach some subjects more intensively in certain periods at the expense of others. There were modular subjects, with a teaching schedule of about 12 or 16 hours - such were, for example, "Theater" and "Yoga" in junior high school. In high school, there were truly elective subjects - the program of each profile included at least 10 different subjects, not coinciding with the general education ones, which were taught according to original curricula developed by the teachers.
• In the curriculum for grades 1-4, the subject "Home Life and Technology" was introduced back in 1990; there was also Theater, Dancing, Lego construction, early foreign language learning (for the first time in 151 SOUPI, Spanish language learning was offered from grade 1, and by native speakers).
• The school established a School Pedagogical Service, unique for its time, and perhaps for the current reality in Bulgaria, which replaced the classic bureaucratic model of “class teacher”. For the first time in Bulgaria, the position of “pedagogical advisor” was created. Subsequently, after studying the experience of 151 SOUPI, the Ministry of Education and Science created the position of “pedagogical advisor”, but it has little in common with the system of 151 SOUPI, where the pedagogical advisors completely replaced the class teachers and instead of the class teacher’s classes, they taught a program for social and personal skills called “STYLE” (“Social Techniques and Arts of Personality”).
• At the elementary level, there was a school correctional group for working with students with learning disabilities– a prototype of the Resource Centers that emerged about 15 years later. A separate Psychological Service with three psychologists worked in the school. There was never any question of the differentiation of the work and responsibilities of all these professionals.
• At the high school level, an 80-minute learning block was introduced for all subjects. In the period 1990-1995, 80-minute blocks were successfully practiced at the lower secondary level as well, and the elimination of this practice was extremely "from above", despite the positive opinion of students and parents and the good results.
• There were no bells to mark the beginning and end of school hours. In high school, students and teachers often determined by mutual consensus the most appropriate distribution and duration of breaks.
• Optional sports were introduced (about 20 types), and students had the opportunity to conduct their physical education classes, including in a private fitness center, built through a public-private partnership on school property.
• In high school, at the end of each school year, each student publicly defended their own project, called an “annual production,” and in 12th grade, a “thesis.” These projects were prepared by the students over a long period of time, with the help of a teacher-scientific supervisor.
• Traditional classrooms of their time were greatly changed. The learning environment in most rooms was organized for work in small groups and teams: chairs arranged in a circle, work spaces on the floor, large conference tables, 2 or more blackboards in the rooms, writing boards in the corridors. Lectures were held in halls organized as auditoriums with streams of two classes from different professional fields. Several dozen specialized areas were formed - art studios, computer rooms, language rooms, science rooms, libraries, theater halls, sports halls, technical workshops, etc.
• Many teachers applied pedagogical approaches in their teaching work that were not traditional for the classroom system - the project method, training methods, learning by doing, assessment through credits, etc.
• In the primary school level, full-day education was introduced in the early 1990s with interest-based activities in the afternoon - information technology, construction, applied arts and design (e.g. ceramics, fashion design), foreign languages (Spanish, English), dance, martial arts, theater, etc.
• In the lower secondary school, all students attended an “Extended Learning” or “Consultative Learning” group within the framework of the compulsory curriculum. In the “Consultative Learning” groups, teachers directed those students who had gaps in Bulgarian language and mathematics. All other students could choose “Extended Learning” groups, with over 10 diverse interest activities. The composition of the consultative and extended learning groups changed dynamically, according to the specific needs and interests of the students. For example, it became common practice to send students to consultative classes after they had been absent from school to catch up on missed material, but then they could return to classes in an interest group. The interest group was chosen by the student in September, but there was an opportunity to change the choice during the school year.
• And many others...

All of these things still sound relevant. Despite the traditional skepticism of many people, these things existed and were practically realized.

But why does the article have a title that includes the word "destruction"?

In the first years after its creation, 151 SOUPI was the subject of constant attacks by retrograde politicians, because it definitely did not fit into their centralized mold. Attempts to destroy the model were along all sorts of lines – from strictly determining the duration of classes and fixing breaks by ordinance, to prohibiting the taking out of sports training at private centers outside the school (which no parent had anything against!), to forcing (somewhere in the middle of the mentioned period) to duplicate the electronic educational documentation with paper (paperwork that no one used, except for bureaucrats in the regional inspectorates), and of course the classic attempts to replace the school principal with a “right person” brought down from above.

Ultimately, in 2002, during the time of Minister Vladimir Atanasov, the school was forced to discontinue most of its aforementioned innovative practices. The principal, Yuriy Andzhekarski, was forcibly replaced, which led to the departure of a significant part of the core of the school team. The school was renamed the National Secondary School "Sofia", but despite the momentum that continued to informally distinguish it from the others, it gradually ceased to be significantly distinguishable from other municipal schools in Sofia. Therefore, we can safely say that 2017 marks exactly 15 years since the collapse of the "charter school" model in Bulgaria, which was not only a successful pilot experiment, but also showed that it can produce more than excellent results, expressed mainly in satisfied parents and students.

Many of the practices mentioned would now be applicable in a different way, and some are probably already outdated. However, the innovations that were implemented in 151 SOUPI have been rediscovered by officials at the Ministry of Education and Science for years and are announced almost as ingenious discoveries and innovations. For example, the creation of the position of Pedagogical Advisor is a direct consequence of a proposal from the 151 SOUPI team to the Ministry of Education and Science. In many schools, the 80-minute block of lessons was adopted (now they would probably ban it). The subject “Home Life and Technology”, which was part of the general compulsory curriculum in 2002-2014, was first introduced into the curriculum of 151 SOUPI in 1990. The program and results of the “Clothing Design” profile (later “Fashion Design”) influenced the programs of vocational high schools in textiles and clothing. The program of the "Software Products and Systems" profile influenced the introduction of training in computer graphic design in a number of schools. Regarding electronic school documentation, we can say that a large part of the team that worked in 151 SOUPI later transferred to work on the creation of the Admin Pro software of the Ministry of Education and Science.

MES is only now rediscovering the innovations of the 151st SOUPI

Other things are yet to be introduced. For example, flexible profiling with elective subjects in high school. Or the creation of a separate class of "innovative schools" from this year (which I am skeptical that will be implemented in the way it was conceived). Or the constant talk about how bureaucracy should be reduced and electronic systems for managing school documentation should be introduced (which continue to remain only words). And others.

Other topics are still taboo (specialized admission, blocks are sometimes allowed, sometimes banned, outsourced sports, flexible curriculum, etc.). All of these things could have been implemented very easily and relatively simply by giving schools more freedom. Instead, they were first banned, and now they are being introduced incorrectly "by the spoonful". Yes, even the introduction of otherwise good practices continues to be done incorrectly, because it is not clear whether the best practices for some will lead to useful results for others.

History is of course sad from this point of view, but the fact that so many years were lost and so much potential was destroyed is not so tragic – we are not the first, and we will not be the last, country to have made serious mistakes in its history. It is fixable. What is worse is that even today, having this deplorable historical experience, which has proven that centralization and equalization do not lead to good results, politicians continue to insist on imposing them and try in every way to make all schools “equal”. But the scariest thing about all of the above is that ordinary people massively support this centralization and think that it is not the freedom and autonomy of schools that will make education better, but some new restrictive regulations imposed centrally by a municipality or other state structure… Absurd, but a fact.

Now the most important thing, if we really want something positive, qualitative and meaningful to happen in education, is for people to have freedom. Both teachers, students and parents! Then they will work miracles, as happened in 151 SOUPI - as a proud graduate of this school, I saw it with my own eyes!

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