A new law on secondary education in Bulgaria is to be presented for public consultation at the end of January.

The draft law on pre-school and school education has been in the making for eight years and three Bulgarian governments have made corrections to it, according to reports of bTV.

In order to avoid a loss of EU funding, the new piece of legislation must be completed by the end of summer and it must take effect in September 2014.

One certain aspect of the draft law is that it will not introduce compulsory pre-school education for 4-year-olds.

The proposal of the center-right GERB government to make pre-school education compulsory for 4-year-olds stirred up heated public debate.  GERB gave up on the idea in January 2013, following a series of protests of worried parents.

The draft law also proposes the introduction of entrepreneurship classes in the curriculum for 7th graders.

"There is disagreement on funding for schools. I believe that we must draft more detailed provisions on external evaluations," Education Minister Anelia Klisarova explained, commenting on the new piece of legislation.

Teachers have insisted that the curriculum must urgently be amended in order to avoid asking children in the early grades to cope with material which is too difficult to comprehend.

School dropouts are also a major problem of secondary education, the largest number of students leaving school in the 5th or 6th grade because they have difficulties catching up.

According to Bulgarian parents, interested parties must have a say at the very initial stage of drafting the law and the new piece of legislation must be based on thorough analysis of the current state of education.