Well-Being, Social-Emotional Learning, and COVID-19 in Bulgarian Schools

• In Event: Lessons from the Pandemic: International Perspectives Addressing Highlighted and Exacerbated Educational Inequalities

Abstract

Before the pandemic, there was much left to be desired from the Bulgarian educational system in providing and supporting the wellbeing of its students.
Thus, only 4% of Bulgarian schools succeed in attaining both high grades and high student wellbeing. This is what the findings of a nationally representative survey showed; it was carried out by the Centre for Inclusive Education (CIE), G Consulting research agency and Bulgarian Academy of Sciences experts’in 2019.

The survey covered 100 schools and over 3200 seven-graders all over the country and examined the level of students’ mental and social wellbeing, their satisfaction with school and the extent to which they feel comfortable there. The research team compared the findings with the performance of the students during the National External Assessment (NEA) and created a Successful School Index. It makes it possible to identify the components that make a school really good, i.e. a school that takes care simultaneously of children’s academic success and their wellbeing.

It was often the case that by ‘good school’ we only mean that students there have high grades. However, schools have other tasks too; they should have children prepared for a full life as adults. One of the ways to know this for sure is to study student wellbeing – truly successful schools pursue high grades but they also think of how their students feel.

The Index developed by the CIE includes three components, each having different weight: 50% of the score is made up of the NEA results, 30% of children’s personal wellbeing (their emotions, mental health and social wellbeing) and 20% accounts for their satisfaction with the school itself (with their teachers, schoolmates and the environment).

Given that the maximum Index score is 100 points, just 10% of the surveyed schools obtained 60 points. These are schools where teachers are well-meaning and supportive, many extracurricular activities take place, the level of acts of aggression is low, and a school community exists. 38.4% of Bulgarian seven-graders are at very low to moderate level of school wellbeing.
During pandemic years, both wellbeing and academic performance dropped in Bulgarian schools. Among these two, the feeling of wellbeing showed larger dropout. Thus, analysis of the consequences for the learning process, distance learning, students and teachers in electronic environment in the school year 2020/2021, together with the analysis of the inequalities in the educational environment in the distance learning, both done by the Institute for the Study of Education show somewhat alarming results.

The survey of the Centre for Inclusive Education reveals beyond any doubt that at an individual level there is a strong correlation between personal wellbeing and academic success. Regretfully, this correlation is broken in many of the schools: either wellbeing is sacrificed to high academic performance, or much effort is put in making children feel well but at the expense of educational function. The present paper explores how and why both were affected in Bulgarian schools during pandemic.

Author

• Iva Marinova Boneva, Association for Shared Learning ELA