• Login
    View Item 
    •   Maryland Shared Open Access Repository Home
    • ScholarWorks@UMBC
    • UMBC Interdepartmental Collections
    • UMBC Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Maryland Shared Open Access Repository Home
    • ScholarWorks@UMBC
    • UMBC Interdepartmental Collections
    • UMBC Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    EDUCATION DECENTRALIZATION REFORM IN BULGARIA AND THE INVOLVEMENT OF THE WORLD BANK

    Thumbnail
    Files
    Dolgachev_umbc_0434D_11752.pdf (3.080Mb)
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/11603/15820
    Collections
    • UMBC Theses and Dissertations
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Author/Creator
    Unknown author
    Date
    2017-01-01
    Type of Work
    Text
    dissertation
    Department
    School of Public Policy
    Program
    Public Policy
    Rights
    This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
    Access limited to the UMBC community. Item may possibly be obtained via Interlibrary Loan through a local library, pending author/copyright holder's permission.
    Subjects
    Bulgaria
    decentralization
    education
    The World Bank
    Abstract
    In this dissertation, I analyze education-decentralization reform in Bulgaria and the involvement of the World Bank (WB) in it. The WB has been promoting a decentralized approach to providing education in a number of developing and transitional economies. Bulgaria is one of the countries assisted by the Bank in adopting a decentralized education system. Insufficient public funds, a demographic crisis, inefficient use of public resources, and unskilled labor force were the main reasons that Bulgaria began reorganizing its education system and searching for outside assistance. School reform in Bulgaria is an interesting case study of a middle-income country that had to restructure its education system to respond to the needs of a changing economy. While education experts and government authorities did not see universal access to education as an issue because most of the children had access to basic education, the country was falling behind in its efforts to provide high-quality education appropriate for the changing needs of the labor market. This study contributes to the debate of advantages of decentralization versus centralization in education by analyzing if decentralization reform, as planned and implemented in Bulgaria, was a tool promoting efficient use of resources aimed at improved student outcomes, or increased the disparity of access and education expenditures in Bulgarian schools. The findings of the study suggest that education-decentralization reform led to a decrease in dropout rates and grade-repetition rates among students and did not worsen the equity in access to education. However, it seems that the effect of the central element of the school decentralization, the Delegated School Budgets, on student dropout and grade-repetition rates was diminished, mainly because of the simultaneous implementation of another efficiency measure, the consolidation of schools, and the lack of accountability measures at the local level of governance that would make the school director responsive to the needs of students. The research also shows that full education decentralization in Bulgaria was not achieved because even though financial decentralization was implemented, a decentralization of authority at the municipal level of governance was never adopted. This study provides policymakers in Bulgaria and other countries in the region with similar education systems and officials in the WB with further insight on the effectiveness of decentralization and the trade-off between its achieved efficiency and perceived inequality.


    Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery
    University of Maryland, Baltimore County
    1000 Hilltop Circle
    Baltimore, MD 21250
    www.umbc.edu/scholarworks

    Contact information:
    Email: scholarworks-group@umbc.edu
    Phone: 410-455-3544


    If you wish to submit a copyright complaint or withdrawal request, please email mdsoar-help@umd.edu.

     

     

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Browse

    This CollectionBy Issue DateTitlesAuthorsSubjectsType

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics


    Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery
    University of Maryland, Baltimore County
    1000 Hilltop Circle
    Baltimore, MD 21250
    www.umbc.edu/scholarworks

    Contact information:
    Email: scholarworks-group@umbc.edu
    Phone: 410-455-3544


    If you wish to submit a copyright complaint or withdrawal request, please email mdsoar-help@umd.edu.