Better at Math with Khan Academy
Help Bulgarian students learn math with confidence. Education Without Backpacks trains and mentors math teachers to use Khan Academy in class. Your donation helps more teachers and students join the program.
About the program
Bringing Khan Academy into Bulgarian classrooms
Why it matters
According to PISA 2025 (OECD), 57% of Bulgarian 15-year-olds do not reach basic proficiency in math, up from 54% in 2022 and 44% in 2018. The gap is growing, and we know what closes it: teachers trained and mentored to use Khan Academy consistently, with clear goals, regular assignments, progress tracked on the dashboard and feedback for every student.
The program and its goal
Better at Math with Khan Academy brings the global learning platform Khan Academy into schools in an intensive, structured way, to improve students' math skills and results. It supports teachers, makes it easier to work with students at different levels and makes lessons more dynamic and inspiring.
The Khan Academy platform
Khan Academy is the world's largest completely free learning platform. Working with it for just 30 minutes a week boosts students' motivation, builds lasting knowledge and lets everyone learn at their own pace (more about Khan Academy's impact).
Preparation for national exams
The content follows the Bulgarian curriculum and includes preparation courses for the national external assessments after 4th and 7th grade.
Data as of 31 October 2026.
What your donation makes possible
Support for teachers, results for students
Intensive training
Teachers go through in-depth training that gives them all the skills they need to use Khan Academy in the classroom.
Mentoring throughout the school year
Regular mentoring sessions with experts and experienced colleagues help teachers put the platform into practice and share what works.
Tracking student progress
Together with their mentors, teachers follow students' progress through detailed data, analyze the results and work to improve them.
A community of schools
Schools join a community of Khan Academy math teachers, meet at annual conferences organized by Education Without Backpacks and help shape education at national level.
Expected effects
What changes in the classroom
Better math results
Working with the platform regularly, at least 30 minutes a week, students make progress in math thanks to the personalized approach and Khan Academy's interactive tools.
Higher motivation
The platform's game-like system motivates students to learn more actively and to aim higher.
Richer teaching practice
By bringing Khan Academy into the classroom, teachers broaden their methods and enrich their lessons with new resources and strategies.
Less routine work for teachers
Khan Academy saves teachers time: it checks homework and quizzes automatically and offers well-organized content that can be assigned to different students by level, with one click.
Principals share their experience
Schools already seeing the difference
“I am proud to say that at the national external assessment in math in the 2025/2026 school year, our 4th and 7th grade students who worked in the program took first place among the schools in the town of Lom.”
Desislava Aleksandrova
Principal of Secondary School “Dimitar Marinov”, Lom
“For me, the greatest value of the program is that it helps us change the attitude to math – from a subject that often causes anxiety to a field where every child can discover, experiment and make progress.”
Milena Oreshkova
Principal of Primary School “Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev”, Razgrad
“We raised the average score in the national math exam after 4th grade by about 5 points compared with the previous year. Last year it was just over 18 points, this year it is close to 24. I dare say Khan Academy contributed to this increase.”
Magdalena Yapadzhieva
Principal of Primary School “Hristo Botev”, Burgas, where all students come from vulnerable groups
The role of our experts
By teachers' side all year round
Our education experts support teachers and schools throughout the whole process of introducing the platform and using it every week.
Training and support
Progress evaluation
Specialized consultations
Teachers share their experience
What teachers already using Khan Academy say
Quotes translated from Bulgarian.
“I am talking about five years of work with the same cohort – from 8th to 12th grade. When these classes start 8th grade, their average annual math grades are between 4.38 and 5.15. In 12th grade the picture is even clearer: the five classes finish with average annual grades between 5.50 and 5.88.”
“I have students who placed in a math olympiad, which had never happened before. I think that is thanks to both Khan Academy and the children themselves.”
“Already last year I noticed there was a result. In the second term, after we started using Khan Academy, test scores in one of the classes went up by almost a full grade.”
“I am happy with my three princesses, who came to love math because of Khan Academy. For me, that is one of the strongest results.”
“For students this is also a strong motivator, because they can see their results clearly.”
“They now work much more consciously, they want to work in Khan Academy and look forward to their Khan Academy lessons. What started as a game has, in these last months, turned into a conscious wish to learn with the platform.”
“Sometimes, if they don’t get it right, they solve the exercise again, just so they make no mistakes and get the crown. They literally compete for those crowns – it is their biggest incentive.”
“I see a positive effect from using Khan Academy, as long as the right exercises are chosen for the children. The moment they see the tablets, the children start showing interest.”
“On the platform they can go back to the same exercise and do it again, and this raises their self-esteem – they see that when they work hard and make an effort, they will succeed.”
“The effect of Khan Academy is in the children’s motivation – willingness and effort.”
“With Khan Academy, teachers manage the process and at the same time motivate students to feel confident about their progress.”
“From the dashboard and the specific skills I assign, I get a very good overall picture of how the students are doing.”
“They work on Chromebooks, while I follow their results in real time and step in when needed.”
“For me, the most useful part is the analysis. We can see right away where the gaps are and work on closing them.”
“I can track absolutely everything in the system – individually, by class and by topic – and see how each student is doing.”
“I use the platform both in lessons and for homework – mainly for practice and for reinforcing knowledge.”
“Since first grade they have been used to getting homework for the weekend, and I decided that instead of giving them tasks on paper, I would assign them in Khan Academy.”
“In my view, this is a big advantage of the platform – it breaks a more complex problem down into smaller skills.”
“The good thing about Khan Academy is that the teacher can choose different tasks depending on each student’s abilities. That way, everyone discovers their own capacity to learn independently.”
“The mentoring support, the exchange of ideas and the meetings with other teachers helped me not just to use the platform, but to look for the best ways to make it useful for my students.”
“With the addition of artificial intelligence, the platform’s potential grows even further – it becomes a valuable assistant that saves time and helps achieve better results.”
“For me, the most valuable thing is being able to assign individual tasks to every child, knowing what they can handle and where the limit of their abilities is.”
“This is without doubt the most important thing about the platform – the chance for students to go back and catch up on their gaps.”
“The platform also supported me in using a differentiated approach to teaching math in my classroom.”
“With Khan Academy, though, I noticed that with the platform’s help, children can catch up on their gaps on their own.”
A program with many partners
Partners and donors
The Better at Math with Khan Academy program is implemented with the support of the UniCredit Foundation.
Institutions
