Digitization in Bulgarian – this is some money that should be given to a company
A working group at the Ministry of Education and Science has prepared new training documentation for driver courses. In it, the officials propose a variety of innovations, for which it is rather doubtful whether they will improve the preparation of the applicants for a driver’s license and make Bulgarian roads safer, reports Trud newspaper.
It is only certain that they will double the price of the courses, as well as that some people will be able to push their services in order to collect some money, he is convinced Yonko Ivanovwho for more than 40 years has been dealing with training on guides and on his back whole herds of officials have tried out their ideas.
– Mr. Ivanov, this week you received from the Ministry of Education and Science a project for changes in educational documentation with the introduction of many novelties. What are they?
– After 9 months of a very interesting and non-standard working group preparing amendments and additions to the documentation for trainingthat of guides, some highlights came out instead of the whole study documentation coming out for us to see and talk about seriously. I say interesting working group because it includes professors from higher education institutions – MEI-Sofia, Yambol and Ruse universities, who have never sat behind the pedal of a training car and never trained candidate drivers. Another part of the group is people over the retirement age, who supplement this educational documentation with some of their visions and platforms, which they did years ago and could not implement, and now they want to implement them. So there are quite a few lobbyist interests brought into this working group, so I don’t see how it will help the implementation of the National Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030. I quite often mention that nothing will change in Bulgaria to reduce road deaths , until we look at the other European countries and the EU Transport Commission, which has long wanted to introduce the so-called continuous training of motor vehicle drivers. This training simply put, it aims, through education in road safety for young children at school, to influence the behavior of parents and, accordingly, to start following the rules and not breaking the laws in the given country. When we talked about this topic with Mrs. Malina Krumova – chairman of the State Agency “Road Safety”, a concept was built that includes the introduction of the topic of road safety in kindergartens, at the next stage in school for children from 1 to 4 grades, then from 5 to 8 grades and in high schools, until they turn 16. Then these young people come to us in driving schools and we continue trainingit for them to appear prepared for the aptitude test. With these “accents” we get from MON, we understand that this whole concept is blown to bits and goes in a completely different direction. What’s more, Ms. Krumova’s agency organized a meeting with MONwhere a representative of the same ministry categorically refused to have one training of children in Bulgarian schools. Apparently, now the ball is being transferred to the educational centers, without realizing how difficult and expensive it will be trainingthat of the candidate drivers.
– It follows from your words that instead of introducing this training program in schools, they introduce it only in driving schools?
– I will not hesitate to call these “accents” another idiocy of another ministry, after this summer’s innovations created by the Ministry of Transport. Apparently everywhere there are appointed people who do not correspond with this theme and impose practices that subsequently lead to racketeering and corruption over the educational centers. Here’s an example – they want to remove the car device theme. So how will a new, young driver learn what a wheel is, what a tire is, what a rim is, what a brake disk is or what pads are – all important things for a driver to drive the car sustainably, to know what change is happening , when an element of the undercarriage device is malfunctioning. They propose to fully digitize the process of training, and we have seen very well where the digitization that was introduced in the practical test for drivers has brought us. It went through several stages – it started with navigation, then a phone to take pictures of the navigation, then a tablet, and now it has reached a routing. It was created by very incompetent people and at the moment of the exam itself, it gives instructions to jump over barriers when turning left, to enter arcades and closed roads, in streets with no exits. Separately chairmanThe examiner of the examination committee should not monitor the skills and knowledge of the driver, but constantly look at this tablet, which in a few minutes loses the line and loses the Internet, where and through which street it will take us. We already have 8 cases of dangerous situations, two of which ended in a traffic accident during an exam – sweeping traffic lights, stopping on a pedestrian crossing, and the pedestrian is on the windshield of the car, good thing it wasn’t a mother with a stroller. Such an accident has not happened not in 10 not in 30 years, it has never happened during an exam, but now a person has to die for the Minister of Transport to start caring, he is supposedly a racing driver, and we have been waiting for 2 July to receive us to explain to him how dangerous this system is. This is their entire digitization and here we come to the question of some money that is taken by the same company that holds it Monthanks for introducing all these electronic systems. And seeing how electronic voting machines work, how electronic prescriptions work, how the thumb went in hospitals and a number of other services that drive us crazy, now they want this digitization to be introduced in driving courses as well. In fact, they don’t introduce it, they impose it to collect their profits.
– I see that there is also a proposal to start writing student evaluations weak 2, medium 3?
– Exactly, and there is no explanation why we have to write current evaluations in both theory and practice, given that there is an exam in both theory and practice at the exiting level. And because you from MON they do not in any way educate the students in school, they want us to educate them when they come to the driving schools. Not to mention the level of education is such that 17-18 year olds come to us and sleep in the halls, young ladies show up with 15cm artificial fingernails and can’t hold the steering wheel, they all do nothing but they look at their phones, they don’t know which is their left and which is their right foot, and this digitization has not led to anything other than their big toes. But we won’t just write grades for them, we’ll type for them training in psychology, the task force recommends. It will be held for two additional hours outside programby specially trained psychologists. And here I go back about 4-5 years ago, when one of the BAS was assigned for an awful lot of money – about half a million BGN, to make a methodology for changes to the psychological tests of motor vehicle drivers – you know, these are the tests that are they do for taxi drivers and for drivers with professional categories. And since this attempt was unsuccessful, he decided to go soloMonthat these tests are not done every 5 years, but only once upon initial appearance. But apparently this team from the BAS will now train the psychologists who will enter our halls and make psycho-profiles of the candidate drivers and examine their personal characteristics. Please note that since 2008, a higher education has been required for all teachers who deal with training of drivers. All colleagues pass the state exam in pedagogy and in psychology, so they are authorized teachers with a diploma. But here again, it is necessary to take some money from trainers, without anyone asking who will pay when these psychologists and their hours are included in the price of the course.
– So the price of driving courses will increase?
– Yes, but let me also tell you about the offer for some “drunk glasses”. Already these glasses were presented on television – they showed what the influence of alcohol was. But we’re asking if anyone has done any research on how it feels and what a person with alcohol readings of like 1.2 per mille feels like, compared to what those glasses show that make you goofy when you put them on. So at the moment there are 1000 educational centers in the country, they all need to buy about 10 pairs of such glasses, that’s 10,000 pieces. Put them at 1,000 BGN each and calculate the 10 million BGN that the importer will collect, where they come from – from the pockets of the parents of the young people who will be trained as drivers. Well, since these “drunken glasses” are so useful, let them take them off MON in the teacher’s class at school, to do experiments, let other children also understand the harm of alcohol. But speaking of money, I have been hearing for 2-3 months now not only digitization of the whole training, and for passing simulators. And as far as I know, another person from this working group makes some kind of simulators, I have no idea how he makes them. But apparently they are taking us back to my youth and the time of communism, when the state introduced some exercise machines in which you sit down and then get up, and your head spins. Also at that time, as instructors, we wrote special books with these same notes in class whether the student picked his nose or looked smart, and there were a bunch of examiners who made a racket at the study centers. Apparently, democracy has already gone down and communism is back in full force, because the documentation offered is part of that time. I have asked what this simulator is, and the agency of Mrs. Malina Krumova replied: “But we do not yet know what it is.” You don’t know, but you put it in my study documentation. Personally, I’ve gotten on exercise machines at training centers in Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain. These are machines that cost hundreds of thousands of euros. You sit on them and feel the movement of the car, bumps, inclines, turns, oncoming lights… A bunch of transport ministers came down here, one promised 20 testing grounds, finally he took the buses and continued his courier services, another car racer promised 25 testing grounds for driving in difficult conditions. During this time we use the roads in the cities as a proving ground with our great shafts, which are either sunk 15 cm or protruded 20 cm, but neither is made like humans. Between them we do slaloms – this is Bulgaria’s training ground. Everything is permeated with corruption and lobbying interests, the same with the educational documentation, and you ask me how much the driving courses will become more expensive. A lot. If now they are on average BGN 1,300, after the proposed innovations, if they enter after the New Year, the course will become twice as expensive – it may reach BGN 2,500 – 2,600.
– Is this what you will say at the discussions in the Ministry of Education and Culture on Tuesday?
– We were given 40 minutes for the meeting. From our organization and other educators, we will go there and say, “Good afternoon. We do not agree with the proposals. And you take what you want. See you at the protest in front of your ministry.” With these proposals for training documentation – that’s what they’re doing, to get the instructors out on the street. This proposed creation was created by the people the current Prime Minister appointed when he was Minister of Education. I asked a deputy minister when they were making a physics curriculum if they invited physics teachers and she told me that they did. And why do you write rules for teachers of auto-moto training, and not invite such teachers? Because we don’t have an electronic system to sell, we don’t import drunk glasses to sell, we don’t have simulator development, nor program to produce psychologists.
*Eng. Yonko Ivanov deals with training of drivers for 42 years. In 1992, he founded the “Union of Teachers of Automotive Training”. He has been a member of the “European Federation of Driving Schools” since 2005. He succeeded his father in the profession and is one of the few people who are familiar with the history of trainingthat of drivers in Bulgaria.
