{"id":10888,"date":"2022-12-15T10:09:17","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T08:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/factcheck.bg\/?p=10888"},"modified":"2024-07-05T18:27:48","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T15:27:48","slug":"politicheck-it-s-not-true-that-bulgarian-language-is-not-taught-in-public-schools-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/factcheck.bg\/en\/politicheck-it-s-not-true-that-bulgarian-language-is-not-taught-in-public-schools-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"PolitiCheck: It\u2019s not true that Bulgarian language is not taught in public schools in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLAIM:<\/strong><\/p>\n

December 9, 2022,<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Kostadin Kostadinov, \u201cVazrazhdane\u201d (The Revival Party):<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFirst I want to say what was already mentioned, I\u2019ll say it once more \u2013 there was an awful amount of closed Bulgarian\u2026well, actually not exactly schools. The teaching in Bulgarian in all schools in Ukraine, where there is Bulgarian population, was ceased. Currently, there is not a single public school where it is taught in Bulgarian. It doesn\u2019t exist, and it hasn\u2019t for years. When we said this thing from \u201cVazrazhdane\u201d, they accused us of lying, saying \u201cit\u2019s not true, there are Sunday schools\u201d. Yes, there are Sunday schools, but they are not public. The state does not participate in their funding, nor does it support them\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This is what the leader of the parliamentary represented formation \u201cVazrazhdane\u201d said during the debates in the parliamentary hall before the final vote on the provision of military aid to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Factcheck.bg collected the facts on the subject.<\/p>\n

CHECK:<\/h3>\n

In 2017, amendments to the Education Law were adopted in Ukraine<\/a>, restricting the teaching in minority languages beyond the primary education stage. The aim of the introduced amendments is to strengthen the status of Ukrainian as the state language, not to ban the languages of minorities in the country.<\/p>\n

Article 7 of the Law on Education<\/a> expressly guarantees the right of those, belonging to the national minorities to study their mother tongue in municipal secondary education institutions or in national cultural societies.<\/p>\n

Learning the mother tongue is neither prohibited nor discontinued after the completion of the primary education stage. The mother tongue continues to be studied as a separate subject after primary school, but most of the other subjects begin to be taught in the state language \u2013 Ukrainian. In addition to that the law also states that \u201cin accordance with the educational program in educational institutions one or more subjects may be taught in two or more languages\u201d- the state language, English and other official languages of the European Union (EU), among which is the Bulgarian language.<\/p>\n

The right of children from the Bulgarian national minority to learn their mother tongue is also guaranteed by a declaration signed between the Ministers of Education of Ukraine and Bulgaria in 2018. The declaration affirms<\/a> that the Ukrainian state will provide the representatives of the Bulgarian minority with access to learning their mother tongue and teaching their mother tongue language and to assist in increasing the number of students who will study or study in Bulgarian.<\/p>\n

In 2020, the Bulgarian Minister of Education and his Ukrainian counterpart signed a Protocol on Cooperation and Exchange. It has been confirmed once again<\/a> that Ukraine guarantees to those belonging to the Bulgarian national minority the right to study in the Bulgarian language in preschool education and from the 1st<\/sup> to the 12th<\/sup> grade of the secondary school in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Bessarabian Bulgarian and professor of history at Odessa University Oleksandr Sereda defines the claims that Bessarabian Bulgarians in Ukraine are being harassed as false<\/a>: \u201cMany of the things we have as a Bulgarian community, such as learning the Bulgarian language in school, we have had since Ukraine became and independent country. The state never forbade us anything, nor it harassed us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bessarabian Bulgarian Tetyana Stanieva shows photos of her daughter\u2019s 8th<\/sup> grade Bulgarian textbook,<\/a> which she uses in the public school in the village of Krinichne, on her Facebook profile.<\/p>\n

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