Let's improve the quality of education through more competition

In Bulgaria, it is assumed that the state is the most competent in all matters related to education and therefore it should take care of everything and everyone. Currently, state regulations tell parents the following:

"You are obligated to educate your child in exactly the way that we have envisioned and consider correct. You have the option of not sending him to our school, but you are obligated to prove every year that by educating him in a private school or with private lessons at home, you followed our model and no other."

That is, the state believes that the parent cannot do anything better than what it has decided is best. It has taken away and appropriated the responsibility for the education of children, placing the parent in a subordinate position to it. There is a complete lack of freedom in education, total equalization has been imposed through state educational standards, and from there the very vice of socialism has reigned supreme – the lack of incentive for development among the “equalized” leads to inevitable decline, which, by the way, we all see clearly today. I will even take the liberty of saying something scary: in today's democratic Bulgaria, which works on the principles of a market economy, the education system is more socialist in structure even compared to the education system during the years of socialism!

What needs to be done to improve the educational model?

The natural enemy of laziness from the equalizer is the other pole – competition. It is necessary to build a highly competitive environment that will keep everyone in the chain who receives money under pressure, and accordingly force them to offer the best possible educational products. No, I will not be some market fundamentalist here who will say that state subsidies in education should be completely eliminated. The existence of state and municipal schools is inevitable, but they must be in conditions of competition – to have a constant motive to improve the service they provide to society. Here is how this can be achieved with five tough reforms:

1. School education should NOT be mandatory. Everyone should be able to educate their child at home with private lessons on an individual program or in any way they see fit;
2. Everyone should have the RIGHT and OPPORTUNITY to school education for their child. The opportunity to exercise this right is provided through a state-subsidized VOUCHER for education - money that the parents of each child receive from the state budget, and which they can invest in any type of school, including private and even private lessons with licensed teachers. In any case, the state subsidizes education with taxpayers' money - let this subsidy follow the choice of the parents, who are these taxpayers.
3. State and municipal schools will receive an additional state subsidy, which, in addition to the money they will receive from vouchers at normal capacity, will be sufficient for their prosperous existence. Unlike now, these schools must follow flexible state educational standards that allow for many different types of state and municipal schools to exist, so that they can adapt to the social group they work with. As a rule, from the parent's point of view, such schools must be free, i.e. their child's education voucher should be sufficient to study there;
4. Private schools should NOT be subject to state regulation with educational standards. Without additional (beyond vouchers from children) state subsidy, these schools will be paid from the parents' perspective, because they will have to pay extra on top of the voucher;
5. Anyone who wants a diploma with a state seal, regardless of where, what, or how they studied, must pass a matriculation exam with an exam in all subjects, which proves that they meet the state's educational standard. That is, something like the SAT in the USA, but I imagine it in a less nerdy form.

You will immediately notice that this model is a clear example of the idea of the “money follows the student” format, which was only partially implemented in our country with delegated budgets. Partly because currently there is still a subsidy for private schools only on paper and is not implemented due to deliberately made conditions, and homeschooling does not receive any at all. In other words, public education in Bulgaria is currently without competition – it has suffocated it by depriving it of a subsidy on the one hand, while at the same time not allowing an alternative to the state educational service to be offered. The result is that currently alternative education is a luxury for gifted children with rich parents (or ungifted children with rich parents, where corruption is at work). In contrast, in the proposed model, alternative education will be supported and will be a normal practice, not an exception.

Well, there is no perfect system and there never will be. Like everything in this world, what I propose will have its flaws. I will highlight some of the most important ones and point out that despite their existence, the model will still work better than the current one:

Question: What are we doing with the Roma minority? This way they will remain completely uneducated!

Answer: And what are we doing with the Roma minorities now? We force them (through coercion around the suspension of child benefits) to stay in our schools and as a reward we get completely illiterate twelfth graders who beat their teachers. Not only that, but they actively hinder and ruin the education of the students around them. The whole society pays for all this, and a lot. Do we need to try to do good by force? Can we do it at all? It was once tried with the so-called "labor and educational schools" and the project was, to put it mildly, a complete failure - they turned into children's prisons that became breeding grounds for criminals, and in which the teachers screwed with the children and did everything else, but not to create educated citizens. This should never be repeated again in human history, so don't even think about it! Let those who don't want to study not study. This should be their right.

Question: Won't corruption schemes take place – for example, private "schools" that will fictitiously enroll students and then return some of the money taken from the voucher "under the table"? Even worse – petty corruption through "licensed teachers" and fictitious private lessons!

Answer: Yes, there will be such schemes. Yes, we will hear about them often. But realize something important - the exact same thing exists right now, in a much uglier and more unpleasant form!!! Don't tell me you don't know that in many schools some of the students exist only on paper! Don't tell me you don't know how students are allowed to move to higher grades without having covered any standards at all, as well as by covering up their unexcused absences! Yes, this is exactly the same problem and it exists today, in the current education system. And yes, this problem is now even uglier and more serious, because in these cases the school is currently robbing the parent of 100% of the voucher and not returning anything "under the table" back to them!

Criticism: Yes, but in the current model, if the money is misused, it at least goes to a state or municipal school, and in the one mentioned, it will go into private hands...

Answer: Whether someone steals on a government salary or steals through a private company, theft is a bad thing and it should not exist. For thefts, there is the National Revenue Agency and the prosecutor's office, which monitor who, where and how spent the money they received through the state budget. Those caught in fraud should of course be punished. Neither the current nor the new system will be immune to this type of theft, but the new one will be a little more personable and a little easier to control...) than the current one. And of course, the mere presence of competition will limit theft and abuse to a very large extent, because parents and students will have a much more diverse choice.

Question: How will we ensure that some parents do not teach their children Islamic fundamentalism, for example?

Answer: How do you guarantee now that this does not happen? Not at all! The fact that a child, for example, conscientiously goes to school now does not guarantee in any way that he is not taught Islamic fundamentalism at home. Freedom in education does not encourage or increase these trends in any way.

Question: But won't many people be left without a diploma?

Answer: It will definitely be so – fewer people will receive diplomas with a state seal on them, because some of the people who choose homeschooling will not study some of the mandatory things that are enshrined in the state educational standards. However, the counter-question is “what’s wrong with that?”. There is nothing wrong with that. People will have gained the knowledge that is useful to them in life, and will have deprived themselves of others that they don’t need. How many times in your life have you shown your diploma somewhere after you finished your education? You probably haven’t shown it anywhere, except to your parents so that they could treat you, or at most because of some bureaucratic state requirement that they asked you for it at some counter. Companies are not interested in “deeds”, but in knowledge and skills.

Question: But don't job advertisements always ask for a completed secondary or higher education?

Answer: This is only and solely because at the moment, due to inadequate state regulations, it is too easy to obtain any kind of diploma and it is considered frivolous if a person has not even made an effort to "get" one. The requirement is currently a filter to reduce the number of applicants - from then on, no employer will consider what exams you have taken with what grades. If the regulations change, the requirements in job offers will also change.

Question: Won't it turn out that we will be giving the same money for education as we do now, but it will be even lower quality, because those who are homeschooled will be taught by their parents, who are not educators?

Answer: Quite the opposite. The pedagogical education of the teacher is an important and valuable thing, but even it cannot approach the positives of individual learning. In school, there is inevitably a classroom system, which, despite innovative methodologies and interactive teaching methods, will always suffer from one main problem – difficult individualization. At home, we have complete individualization. In fact, I can also speak with statistics – in the USA, where nearly 2% of the population benefits from home education, the highest academic results are obtained precisely by those students who are educated at home.

After them are the private schools and at the bottom are the public ones. But if even that is not enough to convince you, think about the following – which students are currently managing to perform best when applying to higher education institutions? Namely – those who, in addition to school, also attend private lessons! Private lessons are precisely the individualized education, which is maximally effective because it solves the private problems that the classroom system is unable to solve. With a voucher system, the student could have the right to spend part of his voucher on private math lessons, instead of on ZIP and SIP at his school, for example, as is the case now, thereby dramatically improving his results. Thus, private lessons will cease to be a privilege only for rich students, and the poorer ones will also be able to benefit from them. Why not?

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