Technical Support for the Development of a National Skills Strategy for the Republic of Bulgaria

1. Developing a Skills Action Plan for Bulgaria

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of Bulgaria’s current skills landscape, including the challenges posed by demographic changes, digitalisation, and economic transitions. It highlights the critical need for Bulgaria to adopt a strategic approach to skills development and use.

Introduction

Skills are vital for enabling individuals and countries to thrive in an increasingly complex, interconnected and rapidly changing world. As the digital and green transitions increasingly shape our societies and economies, getting skills policies right becomes even more critical for ensuring societal well-being and promoting inclusive and sustainable growth. For Bulgaria, implementing a strategic approach to skills policies is essential, given the country’s exposure to demographic and digital disruptions and persistent inequalities among different social groups.

Against this policy backdrop, the OECD has conducted an assessment of the performance of the Bulgarian skills system through the OECD Skills Strategy Bulgaria: Assessment and Recommendations project (OECD, 2023[1]) (OSS Bulgaria Report). The OECD Skills Strategy provided a strategic and comprehensive assessment of Bulgaria’s skills challenges and opportunities in order to build more effective skills systems, including the institutions, actors, policies, laws etc. that have an impact on the development and use of people’s skills. The OSS Bulgaria Report provided recommendations for improving the skills of young people and adults, using skills effectively and strengthening the governance of Bulgaria’s skills system.

The “Technical support for the development of a National Skills Strategy for the Republic of Bulgaria” Project (TSI Project1) provides guidance to the Bulgarian Government for developing an Action Plan for Skills that supports the country in developing and implementing a comprehensive set of skills policy actions. The TSI project operationalised the OSS Bulgaria Report by providing guidance on both the content and process of an Action Plan for Skills in Bulgaria.

The TSI project is set against a backdrop of significant challenges and opportunities in Bulgaria’s skills landscape. To fully appreciate the importance of developing a comprehensive action plan for skills policy, it is crucial to first understand the current state of skills performance in the country, as well as the existing policy framework. The following sections provide an overview of these key aspects, which serve as the foundation for the recommendations and guidance outlined in the subsequent chapters of this report.

Skills performance in Bulgaria

In Bulgaria, as in other European Union (EU) and OECD countries, megatrends such as digitalisation, globalisation, demographic change and climate change are transforming learning systems and the world of work.

In particular, Bulgaria is thought to be highly at-risk of future job automation, and its workers – whose vast majority lack basic digital skills – are not well prepared to cope with it. One study estimated that a typical Bulgarian employee is more likely to be in a job that may be automated (68% probability) than the typical employee in any other EU country (Pouliakas, 2018[2]). At the same time, Bulgarian workers seem to be unprepared to cope with the transformations brought by digitalisation. Bulgaria is the lowest-performing country in the EU in terms of adult digital skills, with only 29% of its adult population having basic digital skills.

Contributing further to the uncertainties associated with technological change is the continuing expansion of international trade and global value chains. Bulgaria’s integration into international trade and global value chains continues to influence the structure and competitiveness of its economic sectors, which in turn has an ongoing impact on skills supply and demand in the labour market. The green transition will also bring major changes to Bulgaria’s economy which is still very reliant on energy coming from increasingly unprofitable coal-fired powerplants. Even more specific to Bulgaria are the challenges related to demographic change. Persistently high migration rates and low fertility rates will cause Bulgaria to experience a major decline of its population, with the greatest impact on its working-age population. Looking forward, Bulgaria’s population is expected to shrink by one-quarter from 2020 to 2050, representing the largest negative growth in population size in the world among countries with at least half a million people (United Nations, 2022[3]). This process is expected to exacerbate skills imbalances on the labour market, which are already beginning to be felt. Finally, the drastic rise of inequalities in the last two decades combined with high poverty levels undermine efforts in the skills area, with vulnerable groups facing major obstacles to access and use Bulgaria’s skills system.

These megatrends and challenges reinforce the need for Bulgaria to design forward-looking, dynamic skills policies. To do so, Bulgaria will need to improve youth skills to ensure that young people develop the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes needed to thrive in an interconnected world. Bulgaria continues to struggle with low levels of performance in its student population, has not managed to reduce the large gaps in learning outcomes between different student populations over time, and struggles to ensure that vocational and higher education are meeting labour market demand. Similarly, Bulgaria will need to strengthen adult skills to address skills shortages, bolster its ongoing economic recovery, prepare for shifting skills demands and improve labour productivity. However, participation in adult education and training in Bulgaria is the lowest in the EU and many adults and employers lack motivation to engage in education and training or otherwise face time-related, financial and other barriers to doing so. In addition to developing skills among youth and adults, Bulgaria will need to ensure that skills are being used effectively in the labour market and at work. This entails activating the skills of Bulgaria’s working-age population, utilising the skills of return migrants and skilled immigrants and utilising workers’ skills effectively at work. Most of Bulgaria’s unemployed or inactive adults are from vulnerable groups, with relatively low participation in public employment services. High emigration and low return migration, as well as low levels of skilled immigration of EU citizens and third-country nationals, have limited Bulgaria’s ability to use people’s skills and address skills shortages. In addition, many Bulgarian enterprises lack the capacity to implement high-performance workplace practices (HPWP) to support skills use, nor do they receive support for doing so. Finally, to effectively design forward-looking skills policies Bulgaria will need to improve the governance of the skills system. There is a need to better co-ordinate different ministries and agencies to ensure a whole-of-government approach to skills and to increase stakeholder involvement in Bulgaria’s skills system. In addition, Bulgaria lacks high-quality information on skills needs in the labour market and public expenditure on skills development and use is low by international standards.

Skills policy in Bulgaria

Aware of the megatrends outlined above and their resulting challenges, Bulgaria has developed various national strategic documents setting policy directions in the area of skills for the near future (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1. National strategic documents with a focus on skills in Bulgaria

National strategy	Topics covered
National Development Programme 2030	This is Bulgaria’s highest level strategic document prioritising policies in all sectors of government and addressing education and skills as its first priority.
Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP)	The RRP aims to facilitate economic and social recovery from the COVID crisis as well as to create a more sustainable, equitable and prosperous economy, including more detail to the country’s reform commitment to develop digital skills, strengthen skills relevance and promote adult learning.
National Reform Programme (NRP)	This programme of the Bulgarian Ministry of Finance reflects skills measures laid out in the RRP as well as those described in the 2021-2027 Operational Programme “Human Resources Development” (OPHRD).
Strategic Framework for the Development of Education, Training and Learning 2021-2030	This is the main strategic document defining policy priorities for Bulgaria in the area of education.
National Employment Strategy 2021-2030	This is the main strategic document defining policy priorities for Bulgaria in the area of of employment and the labour market.
National Employment Action Plans	These are annual action plans that complement the National Employment Strategy 2021-2030.
Strategy for the Development of Higher Education in the Republic of Bulgaria 2021‑2030	This is Bulgaria’s leading strategy related to higher education, which includes measures focused on making higher education more responsive to labour market needs.
Innovative Strategy for Smart Specialisation 2021–2027	This is Bulgaria’s main strategy in the area of innovation, and includes an operational objective related to skills.
National Strategy for Small and Medium Enterprises 2021-2027	This is strategy in the area of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurship, in which three of the six areas of impact are related to skills.
The Partnership Agreement between Bulgaria and the EU Commission 2021-2027	The Partnership Agreement defines the distribution of EU Cohesion Policy Funds to Bulgaria across the designated period.
National Demographic Development Strategy 2012-2030	This is the main Bulgarian strategy in the area of the demographic development of the population.
National Migration Strategy 2021-2025	This is the main Bulgarian strategy in the area of migration, including skilled immigration.
National Strategy for Bulgarian Citizens and Historical Communities Abroad	This is the main Bulgarian strategy in the area of State policy towards Bulgarians abroad, including return migration.

Report outline

The “Technical support for the development of a National Skills Strategy for the Republic of Bulgaria” Project builds on the findings and recommendations of the OSS Bulgaria Report to support Bulgaria to develop a comprehensive action plan for skills policy. Broadly speaking, the TSI Project aims to support Bulgaria in its efforts to implement reforms aimed to encourage investment, increase competitiveness and achieve sustainable economic and social convergence, resilience and recovery, in the area of developing and using skills. The Project aims to strengthen Bulgaria’s institutional and administrative capacity, including at regional and local levels, to facilitate socially inclusive, green and digital transitions, to effectively address the challenges identified in the country-specific recommendations and to implement Union law. The intended short-medium term outcome of the project is that the Bulgarian Government uses the project outputs to develop an action plan for skills policy. The expected long-term impact of the Project is that the Bulgarian Government implements the skills policy actions in line with their national priorities.

This report is structured to reflect the distinct outputs of the Technical Support Instrument (TSI) Project, with each chapter corresponding to a specific output. Chapter 2 focuses on identifying relevant skills objectives, performance benchmarks, and priority policy actions for inclusion in Bulgaria’s national skills strategy. Building on the objectives and policy actions identified in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 outlines the relevant activities, instruments, responsibilities, timelines, and potential funding sources for inclusion in an action plan for skills in Bulgaria. Finally, Chapter 4 offers guidance on developing a monitoring and reporting framework to measure the implementation progress of the skills policy actions identified in Outputs 1 and 2.

References

[1] OECD (2023), OECD Skills Strategy Bulgaria: Assessment and Recommendations, OECD Skills Studies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/c2eb2f34-en.

[2] Pouliakas, K. (2018), Determinants of Automation Risk in the EU Labour Market: A Skills-Needs Approach, http://hdl.handle.net/10419/185289.

[3] United Nations (2022), World Population Prospects 2022: Summary of Results, Department of Economic and Social Affairs - Population Division, United Nations, New York, https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/wpp2022_summary_of_results.pdf.

Note

← 1.  Funded by the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument and implemented by the OECD, in cooperation with the European Commission.