Bulgaria and Romania were among the countries that had made the slowest progress in terms of their quality of education, Romanian news agency Mediafax said, as quoted by the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) on October 16.

Mediafax cited findings of a research by the Lisbon Council for Economic Competitiveness and Social Renewal, a think tank and policy network of economists, public figures, non-governmental organisations’ leaders and business strategists.

The research covered the 12 states that joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 and 2007, as well as Croatia and Turkey, which are both in a negotiation phase for EU membership. Its goal was to make conclusions on the quality of human capital in these countries by analysing four main factors – the quality of human factor, the use of human capital, productivity, and the demographic perspectives.

Slovenia ranked first in terms of human capital quality, while Croatia was at the bottom of the table. With regard to the quality of education, which was of utmost importance for the human factor development, Romania and Bulgaria were listed among the countries that had managed to progress very slightly.

The research said that both countries had kept their systems of education inherited from the times of communist rule and were not training the new generations in a way to make them competitive on the labour market of the EU.  One of the reasons for the slowdown was the quite small amount of funds invested in education. The prospect of changing this trend was very small, the research said.

Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic were on the other side of the barrier, where a considerable progress was made in improving the quality of education, Mediafax said. Bulgaria and Romania were investing an average of 40-50 euro per capita in the sector, while in Slovenia this amount was around 120 euro. Meanwhile, the older EU member states were putting an average of about 190 euro per capita in education each year.