EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PENALTY SYSTEM IN THE CONTEMPORARY BULGARIAN SCHOOL

Abstract

School is a professionally competent institution established predominantly for socializing. Its mission along with families is to form the whole personality of an individual. Through knowledge and professionalism the teachers are the main actors in the processes of socialization and education. The presence of incomplete families and due to the transformation of the family into an area of insecurity, their role is even greater. The fulfillment of the basic functions of the education depend to a large extent on the teachers’ skills, values and abilities. The educational institution is mostly associated with the transfer of knowledge, norms, values, building the cultural foundations of society. Moreover, it is also an effective place for achieving of social experience. In addition to its specific activity related to the learning process, school also performs its external function of preserving and maintaining social order. This function is largely implemented through providing school discipline and complying with the school penalty system in a fair way. To solve the problems related to the discipline, the contemporary Bulgarian school has to focus on the efforts in two directions: 1) Continuous skills improvement of the pedagogical specialists so that the educational contents are presented in an accessible and understandable language, in a way consistent with the age characteristics of the students and improvement of their skills in the class management. Teacher-student relationships need to be built on a partnership basis; 2) The active interaction with the parents as the main actors in the chain “family-school-society” is the second direction where our efforts have to be focused on. The role of parents is crucial in the adoption and support of school policies. Parents and teachers should become a model of honesty, respect, reputation, and self-control to educate and develop adequate behavioural patterns in children. Harmonizing the Bulgarian with the European school legislation is related to the adoption of different normative regulations. A step towards improving the framework and special legislation is the adopted Pre-school and School Education Act, the State Standard for Inclusive Education and the Inclusive Education Regulation. Their goal is to achieve a new and better condition of process of education. Logically, it also includes the whole penalty and encouragement system. The effectiveness of each of the regulated normative punishments is analyzed on the basis of deep interviews conducted by the author among Bulgarian teachers and psychologists.