After the Unions called for the end of the teachers' strike on Friday November 2, Bulgarian teachers would have to choose by themselves which part of the classes to skip in order to make up for those they missed due to the teachers' strike, Standart daily reported.

Head of the Sofia educational inspectorate Vanya Kastreva said the easier classes would be merged. The non-obligatory writers in the literature programme would not be studied due to the lack of time, teachers commented. The ministry of education and culture would decide which literary works to be removed from the programme, Bulgarian language and literature expert Stanislav Georgiev said.

At the same time teachers will work extra hours to help students catch up on their classes, an initiative teachers from St Kliment Ohridski high school in Varna started.

Last-year secondary school students and last-year high school students will be the ones with the most extra work to do. They have to sit high school and university admission exams and therefore need to go through their classes more quickly.

The length of classes, however, would remain the same, Dnevnik daily reported. A single class would not last more than 45 minutes and there would be no extra classes daily, representatives of the regional educational inspectorates explained on November 5. According to Vanya Kastreva, when determining the class length, the students' capacity to effectively grasp the material should be taken into consideration.

From November 6 on, inspectors will start meetings at schools to draw up plans to make up for missed classes. A week later the Education ministry would sum up their conclusions and would decide how to change the study programmes, Dnevnik daily reported.

Teachers started an effective strike on September 24, demanding 100 per cent increase of salaries. An concept agreement was reached between unions and Education Ministry on October 26, but rejected by teachers on October 29. On November 2, the unions announced the end of the strike as the concept agreement had been included in the concept budget 2008, which had been taken to Parliament a few days before.