Bulgaria : Does Making Early Education Free Benefit Disadvantaged Children?
In Bulgaria, school is now compulsory for children aged five and six-years-old (known as preschool for children in this age group) and the government offers full-day and half-day programs. Full-day programs, which are preferred by most families, ch...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/282221522221407555/Bulgaria-Does-making-early-education-free-benefit-disadvantaged-children http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29596 |
| Summary: | In Bulgaria, school is now compulsory
for children aged five and six-years-old (known as preschool
for children in this age group) and the government offers
full-day and half-day programs. Full-day programs, which are
preferred by most families, charge about 176 Bulgarian lev a
year. Half-day programs are free, but families are often
asked to contribute monthly to cover transportation, food
and school supplies. Because the number of full-day slots is
limited, families that want to ensure availability enroll
their children in schools’ preschool programs at age three
or four, which guarantees them a kindergarten slot when
they’re older. But school at this age isn’t free. Thus, poor
families in Bulgaria may be less likely to take advantage of
early education programs when their children are younger,
making it harder for them to find full-day slots when their
children are ready to start at age five. A 2011 European
Union regional studylooking at the situation of Roma
populations in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the
Czech Republic found that while more than 75 percent of
children aged three to six years old were in a preschool
program, about 55 percent of Roma children weren’t. The
Bulgarian-based Trust for Social Achievement, a local
non-governmental organization created by the America for
Bulgaria Foundation to fund programs for economically
disadvantaged people, including Roma, worked with
SIEF-supported researchers to design and evaluate strategies
for increasing early childhood education participation among
the poorest families in Bulgaria. |
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