Inspiration

The National Program “Digital Qualification” aims to respond to the need for targeted efforts and investments to ensure high-quality training of students, teachers, and lecturers in the face of the digital transformation of education. The program is aimed at ensuring that the education system has personnel with a high level of digital competence and a mindset for continuous improvement throughout their professional lives, as well as teaching their own experiences and knowledge.

The program recognizes that the digitalization and implementation of artificial intelligence have placed new, qualitatively different requirements on the nature and characteristics of teaching in schools and universities. The specific public challenges that the program is aimed at addressing include stimulating higher education institutions to improve the quality of education and the teaching process, enhancing the prestige of the teaching profession among ICT specialists, and updating teaching methods to include innovative approaches and modern learning platforms.

The goal of the program is to retrain teachers from other disciplines and train representatives from practice to teach disciplines related to ICT and digitization at different levels of the education system. Within the program, teachers from various subjects in the secondary education system will also be trained to improve their digital skills and competencies and to provide them with opportunities to retrain as teachers of computer science and information technology.

The program is aimed at teachers from state universities accredited under the Higher Education Act, teachers from the secondary education system, and representatives of the business community who want to start teaching and lecturing. Qualification training is provided to teachers, lecturers, and representatives of the business community, distributed in groups. At the end of the training, a certificate is issued based on a conducted test. Teachers who have successfully completed the training and obtained the relevant certificate will organize a seminar at the relevant university with the presence of a representative from the Ministry of Education and/or a lecturer from the training team.

The program lasts 36 months, and the total budget is BGN 2,000,000. The program is financed through the European Social Fund and the national budget.