Diyan Stamatov talked about what increase in teachers’ salaries is needed and when it should be done. In the draft of the State Budget Law, presented on April 21, it is written that the policy of increasing the salaries of pedagogical specialists to reach an average salary of not less than 125 percent of the average salary for the country continues, with the aim of stimulates the entry of young and qualified teachers into the preschool and school education system.
In the draft budget, it is reported that 545.23 million BGN have been provided for preschool and school education for 2023, incl. BGN 465.0 million for the planned increase in funds for the delegated activities in education in connection with the continuation of the policy for increasing the salaries of pedagogical specialists.
“This is the only good part in the education part, and I hope that when examining the State Budget Law itself, in its detailed specifics, there will be a concretization of this case – from when, and by exactly how much teacher salaries will be increased. But this it should not be done with a lagging percentage as teachers salaries are now lagging behind by 25 percent – due to the inflation index on the one hand and on the other hand due to change in remuneration in various other sectors.These two case studies need to be rapidly upgraded to there is no lag in the salary increase, which would lead to a permanent lag, as there was years ago,” said Diyan Stamatov.
He said that from the serious observations they have in budgeting across the country, it is clear that teacher salaries are currently somewhere around 100 percent of the national average wage. “The trend over the last six years has been for teacher pay to be 125 percent of the national average, but there’s currently a serious lag behind teacher pay that was caught up years ago.
For this reason, in my opinion, the increase in teachers’ salaries should be at least 30 percent starting June 1, 2023. We are currently operating with one-twelfth of last year’s budget, but now we are in a very different, non-standard and more -a difficult situation. The budgets we have are one-twelfth of last year and their update, in order to be clear, visible, transparent and understandable for everyone, it is good to be without going back, but to be given from the moment it is a fact The law on the state budget. I hope this will be from June 1,” explained the chairman of the SRSNPB.
From September 2022, teachers were supposed to receive at least BGN 1,486, and there was no increase in their salaries from January 1, 2023, because there was no new Law on the State Budget and in the future there should be an increase in teachers’ salaries, noted Stamatov. At the national level, the Ministry of Education and Science can report the average salary for teachers, and each school has a different average salary. It is a function of the average age of the teachers in the respective school and the threshold of funds reached, explained the chairman of the SRSNPB.
In the last three months of last year, there was a change in wages in various other sectors – social, transport, healthcare, and this led to a change in the average wage in the country. This results in a current lag behind that always catching up 125 percent average teacher salary. This catch-up started in 2016 and was gradually reached at the end of 2020. However, there is now a big backlog in teacher salaries, Stamatov said.
He stated that it is more than imperative that teacher pay increases continue into 2023. The trend for teacher pay to be 125 percent of the national average is the right one for those working in secondary education. If there is a successfully passed budget, it is reasonable to change teachers’ salaries from June 1, by at least 30 percent. Such a change would restore the broken trend for teachers’ remuneration, due to changes in salaries in the country and inflation, Stamatov summarized.
2023-04-27 18:21:20
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