匈牙利教育体系的发展

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The Development of the Hungarian Educational

System
By Gábor Halász, Erika Garami, Péter Havas and Irén Vágó

Edited by: Gábor Halász
National Institute for Public Education

Budapest, February 2001
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Table of Contents
1. The Hungarian educational system at the end of the 20th century: a

summary
1.1 The main reforms and innovation of the past decad
Causes of the changes......................................................................................................... 3
1.1.1 The legal framework ............................................................................................... 3
1.1.2 The structural conditions of the educational system .............................................. 3
1.1.3 The evolution of control and financing relations ................................................... 4
1.1.4 Changes in evaluation policy.................................................................................. 9
1.1.5 Current and expectable reforms ............................................................................. 10
1.1.6 Current and expectable reforms ............................................................................. 11
1.2 The main quantitative and qualitative results of the past decade ................................. 17
1.2.1 Changes concerning participation in education ....................................................... 17
1.2.2 Establishing equal opportunity.................................................................................. 19
1.2.3 The quality and relevance of education..................................................................... 19
1.2.4 Social participation in the reform process ................................................................ 20
1.3 The main experiences of the reform period .................................................................. 21
1.4 Major problems and challenges ................................................................................... 23
2. Educational content and learning strategies for the 21st century

2.1 Curriculum development, fundamental principles, and requirements.......................... 25
2.1.1 The decision-making process: Levels and actors in determining
educational content................................................................................................. 25
2.1.2 Curricular planning and curriculum preparation..................................................... 29
2.1.3 Teaching and learning strategies .............................................................................. 38
2.1.4 Evaluation policies and methods ............................................................................... 41
2.2. The changes and expansion of the content of education ............................................. 48
2.2.1. The motives of the development of the content of education .................................... 49
2.2.2. Entities participating in content development .......................................................... 54
2.2.3. New content .............................................................................................................. 65
2.2.4. Planning, introduction and evaluation of reforms ....................................................... 66
2.2.5. Results and problems................................................................................................ 72
References and Sources ...................................................................................................... 73
List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... 76
ANNEX 1 ........................................................................................................................... 77
ANNEX 2 ........................................................................................................................... 78
ANNEX 3 ........................................................................................................................... 84
ANNEX 4 ........................................................................................................................... 126
ANNEX 5 ........................................................................................................................... 128
2
The Development of Education in Hungary:

A National Report
1. The Hungarian educational system at the end of the 20th century:

a summary
1.1 The main reforms and innovations of the past decade
1.1.1 Causes of the changes
During the 1990s the Hungarian educational system – like those of other countries in the East-
Central European Region – went through historic changes. The scope and direction of these
changes were affected by radical social, economic and political transformations which took
place in the decade following 1989, at which time the institutions of parliamentary democracy
and market economy were being built and the country joined the ranks of established
European democracies. During the 1990s, changes in the Hungarian public education system
took place partly due to the restructuring of the social and political environments, and partly
due to efforts from within the system itself.
Those factors, which affected the content-related curricular processes, are also dealt
with in detail in section 2.2. Of the many causes that contributed in a decisive manner to the
complete overhaul of the public education structure, there are a few which are especially
noteworthy:
• A sizeable decrease in demographics
• The radical reform of administrative and public financing procedures (the direction of
schools by local governments and the introduction of normative, per capita financing)
• The general fall of government expenditures due to the economic crisis lasting from
the end of the 1980s to the middle of the 1990s
• A large scale decrease in the numbers and proportions of the active workforce and the
appearance of unemployment
• An increase in the discrepancy of incomes amongst different social groups and the
related difficulties of social integration
By the end of the second half of the 1990s, the most difficult period of the economic and
social reforms ended in Hungary. A dynamic economic growth was established based on an
equilibrium that produced favorable conditions for the development of public education.
1.1.2 The legal framework
The comprehensive public, vocational and higher education laws adopted in 1993 define the
present Hungarian educational legal framework. In addition it is worthy to mention the effects
of some previously accepted legal acts, such as The Pubic Education Act in 1985, which
widened the institutional independence to a large degree, and moreover, the modifications that
brought about the dissolution of the state educational monopoly in 1990.
The laws passed in 1993 have been modified over the past decade on several
occasions, but the changes have not altered the basic framework established at the beginning
of the 1990s. Besides the educational laws, other related legislation has also been enacted
during this time period that has had a fundamental effect on education. Amongst them, the
1990 Act on local governments, which effectively handed over the control of the previously
3
state-run schools to the local governments, has had the biggest effect. Similarly, the church
property law of 1991 made it possible for religious organizations to regain control of schools
that were nationalized by the state following the Second World War. Likewise, the 1992 Act
on the status of civil servants created a new status for public institution workers – including
teachers – with nationally regulated salaries. It is also necessary to mention the national and
ethnic minority law of 1993 (which granted minorities, amongst other things, important rights
to education), the Act on employment passed in 1991 (which had a considerable effect on
vocational education), and finally the regional development law of 1996 (which affected
development policies in the educational sector as well).
The Public Education Act1 of 1993 effectively assigns local governments the task of
administering primary and secondary education, with the state acting in a supporting role (this
support is defined in size and shape by the annual budgetary bills). The Public Education Act
defines the level of educational support, the programs to be initiated, the core organizational
and operational framework of education, as well as the participants’ rights within the sphere
of education. This law called for the restructuring of the system of curricular regulation, the
introduction of so-called two-tiered regulation, under which the school level organization of
teaching and learning is handled within the framework of nationally defined documents but on
the basis of programs prepared by the schools and adopted on the local level.
1.1.3 The structural conditions of the educational system
As a result of the reforms following the Second World War, the Hungarian school system
adopted a two-tiered structure, ISCED 1 and ISCED 2, organized within a common institution
(see Annex 1). The general framework is comprised of a combined two-tiered 8-grade school,
which students generally begin at the age of six. Prior to this, more than 90 percent of students
take part in institutionalized pre-school education (ISCED 0). Until the early 1990s primary
schools followed a nationally standardized curriculum. Ideally, the average student would
complete the uniform core requirements by the age of 14. Since students are required to study
until the age of 16 (for those who began their studies in 1998, this is extended to 18), more
than ninety per cent begin secondary education (ISCED 3) in some form.
During the course of the 1990s significant changes took place in this educational
structure. This reorganization was determined by the following factors: (1) previously
unavailable academic routes were freed up, (2) the labor market value of the existing
academic routes changed, (3) the freedom of students/parents to choose was expanded upon,
(4) the local and institutional levels were given relative freedom to reorganize academic
routes, (5) the entire decade was characterized by a sizeable decrease in demographics and (6)
the economic recession severely restricted financial resources.
A new law came into effect in 1990 that allowed for a number of high schools to
initiate new academic routes, making it possible for students to enter high school as a part of
their 8-year program – following either the fourth or sixth year of education – before
completing their primary education core courses. Whilst at the beginning of the decade only a
few 8th grade classes (providing education for 13-14 year-olds) operated in high schools,
during the 1999/2000 school-year this number reached nearly 400, which is still less than 10%
of the total number of primary 8-grade classes.
1
Act LXXIX of 1993 on Public Education (Hereinafter referred to as Ktv)
4
1. Chart
The number of 8th grade classes held in high schools, not in primary schools2,
1991/92-1999/00

Source: Jelentés….,2000
The choice of academic routes experienced another major change in that, following
the eighth grade, a growing percentage of students have been enrolling in schools that grant a
certificate (matriculation), allowing students to move on to higher education. At the end of the
previous decade, more than 45% of graduates of 8-grade schools moved on to dual vocational
schools (which combine educational and work programs, but which do not qualify students
for higher education), whilst at the end of the decade this ratio had dropped to below 25% (see
Chart 2).
Chart 2
Percentage of students continuing studies in various school types following the 8-year
primary school program, 1989/90-1999/00

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Source: Jelentés…, 2000
2
The primary school form established after 1946 (ISCED1 and ISCED 2 combined in one institution) was the
exclusive institution of education provided for the 6–14 age-group until 1990
5
As Chart 2 shows, in the Hungarian school system students may proceed with three
secondary school (ISCED 3) programs after completing their basic 8-year primary school
studies. Of these three, two offer the possibility of continuing with higher education: one of
these is the general high school (gimnázium), which lasts for four – and in some cases five –
years, and the second is the vocational secondary school (szakközépiskola) combining
general and vocational education, which lasts – depending on the chosen form – from 4 to 6
years. Vocational secondary schools underwent significant reforms throughout the decade: the
first two years (involving students of up to 16 years of age) do not involve concrete vocational
training, whilst the acquisition of mid-level professional qualification usually takes place
following the 12th year of education – following the completion of the secondary school
matriculation exam. The third form of training, the vocational training school (szakiskola),
does not qualify students to continue on to higher education. During the 1990s this form of
education also underwent significant restructuring. Originally called vocational apprentice
VFKRRO 6]DNPXQNiVNpS] XQWLO WKH HQG RI WKH GHFDGH LW SURYLGHG D WKUHH-year course of
study (a part of which, from the first year on was comprised of concrete professional training
and practical instruction). As a result of the changes that took place at the end of the decade
the vocational training school will change to a four-year program, in which the first two years
will be devoted to academic education, which does not include specific preparation for a
concrete profession. Special professional training containing actual work may only begin
after the 10th year. The focus of practical training before the 10th year may only concern career
orientation and the creation of a professional foundation.
Scrutinizing enrollment figures separated by age groups may capture a comprehensive,
well-informed picture of the student flow within the school system. From the perspective of
Hungarian school changes, the key ages are 13, 14 and 15. For example in the 1998/99 school
year in Hungary, of the 124,485 13-year olds 94 %, whilst of the 119,574 14-year olds 62.6%,
and of the 15-year olds 13.5% were enrolled in 8-year primary schools (see Table 1). This
information clearly shows that students gradually leave the 8-year primary education behind
and not necessarily at the typical ages. The causes for this are partly due to the number of
repeated school years, and partly due to the Hungarian trait of postponing the beginning of
primary school studies by 1-2 years, depending on the child’s individual development (which
means that, although the official age for beginning school is 6, a relatively large number of
children still attend pre-school at the age of 6 or 7).
6
Table 1
Numbers of students attending school-based public education broken down by age and school type
High School Night Students in Total

Sprecial Short
Primary and Total School and Daytime Enrolled
Kinder- Needs Vocational Higher
Age School Vocational Daytime Correspon- Total Instruction Students by
garten Education Education Education
(1–8.) Secondary Instruction dence by Age Age Group
(1–8.) (1–3.)
School Courses Group % in %
5 111004 861 346 – – – 112211 – 112211
6 85087 43389 1224 – – – 129700 – 129700
7 2484 109450 2709 – – – 114643 – 114643
8 – 120122 3595 – – – 123717 – 123717
9 – 118107 4040 – – – 122147 – 122147
10 – 117973 4419 – – – 122392 – 122392
11 – 119570 4589 – – – 124159 – 124159
12 – 120462 4641 – – – 125103 – 125103 99,4 99,4
13 – 117722 4551 491 1721 – 124485 – 124485 97,9 97,9
14 – 74824 4252 9150 31348 – 119574 – 119574 99,0 99,0
15 – 15879 3538 25367 73066 – 117850 58 117908 95,8 95,9
16 – 4806 2594 34083 77435 – 118918 628 119546 92,0 92,5
17 – – 1501 25722 73274 – 100497 3527 104024 72,9 75,4
18 – – 850 12650 54566 14023 82089 8219 90308 57,2 62,9
19 – – 443 7286 28437 27202 63368 12224 75592 41,0 49,0
20 – – 309 4647 14357 30785 50098 14380 64478 31,0 39,9
Source: OM educational statistics; KSH, Demográfiai Évkönyv 1998 and calculations by András Sugár
Notes:
1.Students between the 5th and 8th grade within 6- or 8-grade high schools may be found amongst primary school students
2. Adult education only means adult education within the formal system
3. Rates related to age groups are estimated
Looking at the changes of the school system and programs that took place in the
1990s, it is worthwhile to mention those, which point towards the prolongation of the general
core education. Since in the first years of secondary schools in which there is also vocational
education, general education must be provided to an increasing extent, the gradual extension
of the 8-year primary core education has begun and the student’s choice of a career path is
postponed. All this entails the expansion of secondary-level education and the postponement
of an increasing proportion of vocational training lasting to the period after the 12th grade.
As an effect of the demographic decline, by the end of the 1990s the rates of
enrollment for 16-17 year olds rose above the average of the OECD countries. On the other
hand, the percentage of the 18-year and older groups still in the school system was lower than
the OECD countries’ average at the end of the decade (see Chart 3). The increase of the age
of compulsory education is also worthwhile to mention in relation to the changes in student
flow and the school system. The 1996 amendments of the Public Education Act increased the
age of compulsory education from 16 to 18. These changes, as we mentioned before, affected
those students who began their studies in or after 1998.
Chart 3
Rates of enrollment for 15-20 year olds in Hungary and in OECD countries, 1998 (%)
Source: Education at a Glance, 2000; Jelentés…, 2000
We can only establish a complete image of the institutions and program types of the
Hungarian school system by mentioning other specific educational forms regulated by the
most important laws and other high level legal statutes. It is necessary to separately mention
the following:
• The different types of special needs education according to the characteristics of the
deficiency
• The various forms of education of national and ethnic minorities in their own
languages
• Bi-lingual primary and secondary education aimed at modern foreign language
education
• Primary and secondary adult education within the school system
• Basic arts education geared towards the development of artistic (primarily: musical)
skills
• Continuing vocational education following matriculation examinations, including
accredited, higher vocational education
1.1.4 The evolution of control and financing relations
Perhaps the most significant change of the 1990s was the continuation of the
previously started decentralization process, which resulted in the Hungarian education system
becoming one of Europe’s most decentralized systems by the middle of the decade. More than
90% of primary and secondary schools had been turned over to local governments with
significant political autonomy. More than 1800 local governments run schools providing
complete ISCED 2 level education. The local governments have a wide range of rights in
public education: they autonomously decide on the establishment or the shutting down of
schools, they outline the school budgets (including the amount budgeted for teachers’
salaries), they appoint principals, approve documents defining the school’s organizational and
pedagogical operation, they enforce the financial and legal restrictions concerning the school
and evaluate their operations. No higher authority including the central government can give
direct orders to the local governments. If they perform an illegal act within the field of public
education, a court order may demand they change their conduct.
Large-scale, local independence (of settlements) is balanced by broad institutional
rights. All schools are independent legal entities, which manage their own budgets. The
school’s principal acts as the teachers’ employer. Budgetary possibilities permitting, he can
even enter into salary negotiations with the teachers above the minimum amount defined
nationally and based on the teacher’s qualification and term of employment. The teachers
collectively decide on a number of basic questions, for example: the adoption of the school’s
rules of organization and operation and its local curriculum (these documents however are put
into effect by the school’s maintainer – most commonly the local government). Besides the
schools, representatives of students, teachers and parents operate a standing, elected body (the
school board), to which the maintaining local government delegates one member.
As a result of the changes of the 1990s, a system has been set up to direct public
education that is characterized by shared responsibility. The leadership structure is broken
into five levels: national, regional, county, local and institutional. At the regional level there
are 7 state offices entrusted with evaluation duties, which are under the control of the Minister
of Education. At the county level there are 20 county self-governments (and 20 state offices
under the authority of the Minister of the Interior, which provide general legal control). Of the
more than 3000 settlements, more than 2400 have established some form of a public
education institute. Responsibilities are shared among these levels, and the governing
organizations and the social-professional partners. The division of responsibility is spread out
over every function in public education, such as the definition of institutional profiles,
staffing, administration, student influx and quality control (See the table entitled “Levels and
competencies of decision” in Annex 4)
Decentralization also affected curriculum regulation. As a result of the 1993 Public
Education Act, between 1996 and 1998 all schools were obliged to prepare a strategic
document called a pedagogical program. As part of this document – within the framework set
by the national curricular documents – they had to develop their own local curricula. They
were given three choices: (1) with small adjustments or without changes they could adopt the
ready-made programs offered by the national authorities (2) using different elements of the
national ready-made programs offered by the national authorities they could set up their own
independent programs, or (3) they could develop their own completely independent program.
As far as the national framework is concerned, two essential documents need to be mentioned.
One is the National Core Curriculum adopted in 1995, which defines the common national
cultural material as well as the necessary skills and competencies by fields of knowledge and
longer cycles (covering several grades) for the time period of the general basic education. The
second are the framework curricula published in 2000, which define the mandatory subjects to
9
be taught, the minimal time frame required, and the minimal material that has to be taught in
each subject during the entire period of basic and secondary education for every grade and
program (school type). The hours of instruction defined by the framework curricula are
obligatory for all schools, but the legal framework opens up a number of regulated
possibilities for how to diverge from them locally.
The financial system of public education is in harmony with the conditions of
decentralized governance. The largest part of the educational state support appears in the
budget of the Ministry of the Interior, which grants funds to local governments maintaining
their respective schools in accordance with principles and indices defined in the annual budget
bill (this is called per capita financing). Local governments finance school operations through
various means of state support and their own sources. School budgets are set during budget
bargains, in which the financial needs of the school are judged according to their individual
financial situation. The school’s financial needs are determined in part by the general legal
regulations (for example the employees’ monthly wage scale, the stipulations regarding
teachers’ qualification, the mandatory number of teaching hours, and the school’s required
grading scale), and partly by local specifications (teacher’s age, extra lessons provided
according to local needs, the state of the school’s technological assets, and the price of
equipment needed).
The state of public education has been largely defined by the staggering economic
crisis and transformation taking place all over Central and Eastern Europe, which made it
impossible for many countries in the region to maintain their previous standards in the public
service sector. The crisis in Hungary was far less serious than in most of the other countries of
the region, but the effects were felt here in the late 1990s, as well. The real value of funds for
public education fell by 40% during the mid-1990s, which in part showed up in the
decimation of teacher’s salaries, and partly in the decay of schools’ equipment. By the end of
the decade economic prosperity had begun and as a result, governmental measures were
enacted to increase the real value of expenses, yet it will probably take a few years to achieve
the previous level. The amount of money granted to public education from the GDP also
fluctuated during the period under analysis. During the second half of the decade the
proportion dropped, first mainly as a result of the decrease of expenses resulting from
budgetary restrictions, and later because the increase in expenses was not as large as the
growth of the GDP after the initial economic growth.
Of all processes in the Hungarian public education observed during the decade, one is
especially interesting: the enrichment of the means of state policy. Since the decentralized
environment of governance arises from the constitutional conditions established at the
beginning of the decade, and since changing these conditions – especially from interior
education – is not truly possible, governmental policy has to establish means, which make it
possible to achieve basic social and professional goals under the given circumstances.
1.1.5 Changes in evaluation policy
During the 1990s the evaluation function became more important and prevalent in the
Hungarian education system, primarily due to the decentralization of governance, which
increased the demand of educational stakeholders – and especially decision-makers – to
receive feedback concerning processes at the institutional level. Another reason was concern
over the quality of education (which increased during the 1990s), which was not independent
from the fact that there has been no governmental inspections of schools since the mid-1980s,
therefore the external professional supervision of school operations has weakened.
Governmental policies based on assessment and quality control at the end of the 1990s
relied on the following pillars:
10
• Strengthening the government’s role in financing education and enforcing quality

considerations in the distribution of governmental support amongst school
maintainers (e.g. increasing support for institutions in dire situations)
• Strengthening the role of local and regional planning (e.g. obliging local governments
to develop extended plans for institutional development)
• Continuing the development of content regulation, as well as strengthening the role of
the state in setting and standardizing content (the elements of these will be listed
later)
• Establishing organizational mechanisms for institutional level quality control
• Employing various other means (e.g. launching institutional level organizational
development programs or measuring student achievement based on sampling)
The end of the 1990s saw Hungarian public education develop into a system composed of
many and varied elements, with complex evaluation and quality-assurance aspects. The tools
developed (of which the relevant section of the following chapter will give a picture) include
the definition of national standards, the detailed legal regulation of evaluation and quality-
assurance tasks, the establishment of various mechanisms of quality control, and the initiation
of related development programs.
1.1.6 Current and expectable reforms
For the past decade and a half, Hungarian public education has experienced large-scale
changes generally related to the modernization of public education, its adaptation to the
changing social and economic environment, and the encouragement of innovation. It is
important to stress, that in the sense of the way this concept is generally used, the changes
may not be regarded as a comprehensive educational reform. Significant parts were connected
to local-institutional level initiatives more or less supported by governmental policy, which
may result in more than trivial divergences. It is more useful to talk about reform-oriented
changes since the size and the more or less coherent nature of the changes provide them with
the characteristics of a reform, yet still we cannot talk about a series of carefully planned state
measures enjoying significant social and political support, aiming at comprehensive,
systematic transformation, similar to the reforms in numerous developing countries in the
1960s and 70s. The following is a summary of the most significant reform-oriented changes:
The restructuring of the structure of governance and financing. In a previous section
we described in detail the past decade’s decentralization process. Here we will stress those
steps, in which the objective is to guarantee coherency and transparency within the highly
decentralized system. One of these measures was the development of evaluation and quality
control procedures (which were mentioned before and will be dealt with in greater detail
later). Improvements in planning are also significant. The 1996 modifications of the Public
Education Act assigned county self-governments the responsibility of preparing – with the
help of the relevant settlements and social partners – medium-term (6-year) provision and
development plans, which must be systematically reviewed. In order to implement the plans
decentralized financial funds were established, which in the separate counties provide support
for development and the completion of local tasks. Under the 1999 amendment of the Public
Education Act, every local government in the vicinity of which at least two institutions are
functioning, shall prepare similar plans. The strengthening of public education cooperation
between settlements is especially important. The state facilitates this cooperation in many
ways, such as by establishing appropriate legal conditions and creating interests. Some state
support may only be acquired by the settlements if they apply in cooperation with each other.
11
Within the regulation of the public education system there is an increasing emphasis
placed on applying means of financing. By annually reviewing the normative financial
support given to school maintainers and introducing smaller or greater changes, the
government tries to create interested relationships, which make the local decision-makers
accommodate the governmental demands. There is a growing significance of earmarked
subsidies that the school maintainers and the institutions receive in a grant system and upon
completion of defined stipulations. The established inequalities that are unavoidable in the
decentralized situation are also partly compensated for with financial tools. A certain part of
the support is used for direct compensation, such as special support of schools, which deal
with disadvantaged students or schools in small settlements.
The state’s educational policies place special emphasis on statistical and informational
system development. During the 2000 school year new statistical methods were introduced
which are largely based on electronic data collection, processing and forwarding. The content
of data collection was also improved so that decision-makers received feedback on more
elements of the institutional level processes. The diversity of local curricular programs
necessitated the collection of data on curricular programs.
In general, electronic communication now plays a larger role in the organization of
public education procedures. An important initiative that is worthwhile to mention is when, in
1998, electronic communication tools brought those professional background materials that
were necessary to create pedagogical programs to hundreds of schools and regional centers. A
completely new element of the support of informational tools was the assistance it offered to
students progressing from primary to secondary education: in 1999 the Secondary School
Admissions Information System (KIFIR) was introduced, which made it possible to track
individual high school offers, the demands of students concerning the selection of high
schools, and also the movement of individual students at the national level. Informing schools
about the selection of textbooks and the tracking of demand for various textbooks is also
conducted with the help of the electronic communication equipment.
The next decade is likely to witness the shift of emphasis to governmental means that
facilitate the meeting of social and professional requirements even under circumstances of
decentralization. Special attention will be paid to quality assurance and the monitoring of
local processes taking place within the institutions.
Content reform. The most significant reforms of the 1990s affected the content of
education and the system of content, which will also be dealt with in the following chapter.
Here we will highlight a few elements of them. The schools – with permission from the
central authorities – had been able to adopt so-called individualized solutions since the 1980s,
i.e. they were allowed to diverge more or less from the centralized curriculum. As previously
mentioned, the 1993 Public Education Act introduced the so-called two-tiered system of
content regulation, which made it possible for schools – in the framework defined by the
national level documents – to adopt their own curricular programs. We also mentioned the
national level documents – the National Core Curriculum issued in 1995 and the framework
curriculum published in 2000.
The new central curricular documents developed in the 1990s contain significant
revisions of several points of the previous curricula. Special emphasis is placed on faculty
development and differentiation, as well as on the development of inter-disciplinary
integration and skills that are applicable to many different areas of education. A number of
modern subject areas received attention, such as media education, drama pedagogy,
sociology, modern information and communication-technology studies, the study of Hungary
and Hungarian culture, environmental and health education, the teaching of studying, career
orientation, ethics and behavioral science, and European studies. Special attention is devoted
to areas such as self-evaluation and cooperative skills development, strengthening foreign
12
language communication abilities, community development and alleviating social

disadvantages (all of these will be dealt with in detail in the following sections).
On the basis of the National Core Curriculum, schools were required to prepare their
own pedagogical programs and curricula by 1998 with the help of nationally approved
program patterns. According to research results, one sixth of all schools introduced
completely individualized, self-developed curricula, while almost 60% reshaped other set
curricula or took parts from additional sources to suit their specific needs. The rest adopted
their curriculum without modification from programs prepared by others. This process has
truly had a noticeable effect on the schools’ internal relations and has significantly increased
the involvement of their teaching staff.
Research results have also proved that programs prepared on site produce significant
variances in program content and quality. This is the primary reason for the fact that the
framework curricula, published in 2000 contain more detailed content provisions than those
set forth in the National Core Curriculum. The requirements, for example, are given for each
grade instead of an extended pedagogical cycle, and these requirements are not grouped into
larger fields of knowledge, but into concrete subjects. At the same time – as we will see a bit
later – these new documents provide space for many types of local deviations. For example,
they support the introduction of various integrated subjects and the implementation of special
pedagogical techniques, such as the project method. In 2001 schools will be required to
perform a self-review of their curricula with respect to the new framework curricula. For
those institutions that have a curriculum, which differs significantly from the published
framework curriculum, an opportunity to have their own program accredited will be provided
for.
Besides curricular programs, textbooks have also had a significant effect on content
changes. One of the biggest changes in the 1990s in this respect was the restructuring of the
textbook market and the explosion in the selection of textbooks. Until the end of the previous
decade, the general situation was that for each class and each subject there was only one
textbook. By the end of the decade it became normal that in every class of general education
and for each subject there was a great variety of textbooks – at the end of the 1990s there were
25-40 textbooks and workbooks – available for every subject. Contributing to the economic
boom in the textbook market was the governmental support provided to the end-user from the
beginning of the 1990s, which means the support reached the parents by way of the schools,
increasing the demand for large scale differentiation.
In the first years of the third millennium three important directions for educational
content reform are likely to arise. The first will be the development of the centrally defined
curricular and test standards, which will in all probability mean that testing will be
emphasized more than before. Second is the development of the available curricular programs
and textbook supply, and within this the development of the so-called complex pedagogical
systems will be increasingly stressed. By this expression Hungarian decision-makers describe
a system that contains all the important elements of the development of teaching and learning
from curriculum programs, textbooks, teaching materials through evaluation and assessment
standards to the preparation of the teachers providing education on the basis of the given
program. Finally, the third important area of development will likely remain program
development and adaptation at the academic level to ensure the quality of local adaptations.
The goal of all these changes is to ensure that the content of education more closely matches
the changing social and economic demands, as well as the students’ various individual
circumstances.
Reforms of the examination and qualification system Besides the curricula and
textbooks, examination and qualification systems truly define the development of educational
content. Throughout the 1990s significant reforms were launched and carried out in this area.
13
During the decade the development of a new test form to be filled out upon the completion of
the basic studies (basic knowledge exam) was initiated in order to make it possible to
complete a general education, primarily for those individuals enrolled in programs that did not
offer a matriculation exam. In addition, the reform of the high school graduation exam – the
matriculation exam – has started. The most important elements of this exam are varied levels
and standardization. Varied levels means that the students may choose in every subject
whether they want to take middle or advanced examination. Standardization ensures that the
matriculation exam, which is traditionally an internal test, contains an increased number of
centrally standardized elements. High school graduates will probably first take a test
according to these new requirements in 2005.
Besides these exams, it is worthwhile to mention the university entrance exams and
the new, highly controversial entrance exams organized by high schools. As far as the former
is concerned, one Hungarian initiative deserves to be mentioned: the so-called “matriculation-
entrance” examination that is organized by the central authorities in certain subjects. It is
important to stress that the previously mentioned new elements (i.e. varied levels and
standardization) entail the reconsideration of the relationship between the high school
matriculation exam and university entrance exams. In regards to the entrance exams organized
by high schools, the growing role of the central authorities is also worth mentioning: on one
hand this means the restriction of this test form (e.g. written entrance exams may only be
organized by those schools whose application numbers reach a certain level), while on the
other it is manifested in the centralized control over content. For the first time in 2000,
secondary schools had to use the centralized exam provided by the Ministry of Education. In
this case it was easy to observe a further effort of the general ambition to shift emphasis away
from objective knowledge towards general abilities, such as problem solving ability.
In the area of professional education one of the most significant reforms of the decade
was the creation and introduction of the National Instruction Register (OKJ), which contains
every profession that a form of education can be organized for, either inside or outside the
school system. It also contains the stipulations for entry into this education, the classification
of the ISCED level of the education, the time needed for the instruction, and the basic
requirements to pass the professional test. Within the definition of the latter, the social
partners representing the labor market have played an important role.
Specialized education in preparation for a concrete profession either within the school
system or outside it takes place on the basis of the same instructional register. By regulating
both the internal and external educational forms within one system (both for youth and adult
instruction), OKJ has partly created a bridge between them, and partly set them at odds.
Changes in the school structure. In the 1990s, significant changes took place in the
structure of the school system. Some of these occurred due to uncoordinated local and
institutional level decisions, and another part as a result of conscious reform ambitions.
Amongst the latter, of special significance is the extension of the required age of study, the
effect of which is going to be clarified in the decades to come. The large-scale decrease in
demographics makes it possible for this extension to take place without significantly
increasing the number of building and personnel capacities, but at the same time keeping the
more poorly prepared students in school will demand a significant revision of pedagogical
methods.
Effects of the other significant alteration of the school structure, the increase in the
duration of general education, are going to appear sooner. Under the 1993 Public Education
Act, vocational training, which prepares a student for a concrete profession may not begin
anymore in the 9th year of study, only in the 11th. The National Core Curriculum and the
framework curricula that are currently being introduced were developed with these new rules
in mind. Since 1998, students in the 9th and 10th grades in vocational training spend all of their
14
time in school, with vocational education beginning only in the 11th grade. At the same time
the duration of their education is increasing: the educational program of the vocational
training school, which replaced the vocational apprentice school, now lasts for 4 years instead
of 3. The postponement of the preparation for a concrete profession does not mean that the
practical content of former 9th and 10th grade education has been completely abandoned.
Beside the general education, as previously mentioned, education takes place in a limited time
period that contains practical elements, career orientation and professional preparation. As
opposed to the earlier practice, this training is not organized into one profession, but into
larger groups of professions. Another significant element of this change is that general
education aiming at skill-development also takes place in the 11th and 12th grades. The
primary goal of this reform is, besides retaining the professional and practical character of the
education, to release the pressure of the two early field choices, and to decrease the distance
between the forms of education offering and not offering matriculation.
Just as significant are the organizational changes taking place in the fields of education
granting matriculation. As a result of a developmental program that was financed through
World Bank loans, the educational structure changed in the majority of vocational secondary
schools during the 1990s in a way, during which in the first two grades (9 and 10) the
proportion of general education lessons was increased significantly, while professional
training became concentrated in the higher grades. At the same time, the previously large
number of educational areas in the 11th and 12th grades was reduced, and larger professional
groups were established. Parallel to this change, a significant part of the specialized
instructional elements that prepare students for a concrete profession (leading to a technical or
trade school exam) was pushed back to the 13th grade (or even, in some cases, the 14th) after
matriculation, which expanded the entire period of instruction. An important feature of these
changes is making it possible for students who participate in a vocational secondary school to
choose a professional area as part of the matriculation exam. These changes started in the
early 1990s in a narrower institutional circle as an experimental change and they spread to
most of the vocational secondary schools by the end of the decade. An important goal of this
reform is the postponement of the selection of a profession and increasing the standard of
education.
In the 1990s significant structural changes took place at the secondary level of general
education as well. The greatest structural change is the aforementioned spreading of six- and
eight-grade high schools. Those schools that take students from 5th and 7th grades obviously
see preparation for higher education as one of their primary goals. This task can be completed
more successfully if they start dealing with the best-prepared students already at an earlier
age. The 8-year education is practically a renewal of the typical educational form that existed
before the Second World War, but the 6-year programs are new developments. These new
forms were not set up as a result of conscious state reform, but rather because of local and
institutional initiatives. Although the central regulation made such initiatives possible, it
discouraged and even tried to restrict them in the second half of the 1990s.
As opposed to this, the organization of bi-lingual high school and vocational
secondary school education was launched as a result of a conscious state reform policy. This
development has also had structural implications, since in schools that offer bi-lingual
instruction, education generally lasts a year longer since students participate in an intensive
one-year language course before they start the normal subjects. It is also a result of conscious,
state reform-policy that in the final year of high school subject-specialization was extended,
making it possible for students to take more classes in certain subjects and to enrich their
studies with more professional content.
Within the structural changes it is also worthwhile to mention the spread of so-called
mixed schools. These secondary schools offer both general and vocational education, or
15
combine those forms of vocational training that do and do not grant matriculation. In addition,
more schools have established simultaneous primary and secondary instruction. These types
of mixed schools were in part encouraged by state policies, and in part organized as a result of
local decisions weighing economic and pedagogical factors. These institutions react in a
flexible manner to the changing needs, they may be run more economically and the
combination of the different forms of instruction also provides a pedagogical advantage. For
example, it may provide a beneficial organizational background for the reinforcement of the
connection between general and vocational education programs, as well as horizontal student
movement between these types of programs.
The reform of teacher training and in-service training. During the past decade smaller
reform-oriented changes have been implemented in teacher training and an enormous
restructuring took place in regards to in-service teacher training. As far as initial teacher
training is concerned there are two significant changes worth mentioning. The first change is
the definition of qualification requirements in a governmental publication, which prescribed
what percent of university and college course work should be devoted to the professional
learning and practical experience of teachers, and what content had to be taught. To this effect
the emphasis is likely to be shifted from teaching the subject towards the development of
professional competencies required for the successful organization of teaching and learning.
The other significant change concerning initial teacher training was the integration of the
university and college systems, which was launched at the end of the decade in the framework
of a World Bank program. In the long run, it may also contribute to the training courses
provided for teachers for teaching in various types of schools and educational levels, which is
currently characterized by a large degree of fragmentation, and which may be brought closer
to each other.
Whilst in initial teacher training only smaller changes took place that had long-term
effects, the reforms concerning in-service training were indeed global and were based on an
approach that may be regarded as being new even if compared to international standards. The
modifications to the 1996 Public Education Act brought about a system for which the most
important elements were the following: (a) the system receives legally guaranteed financing
from the state budget, and its operations are regulated by a governmental decree, (b) the
greatest share of the support is given to the schools on the basis of a normative system, (c)
schools can use state support on the basis of an institutional level in-service plan adjusted to
their pedagogical programs, (d) individual teachers are made interested in participating in in-
service training (e) schools may use state funds only for accredited programs provided by
instructors accredited by the state (f) every potential program provider, even private entities,
can participate in creating the selection of training courses and (g) the system is coordinated
and developed by a national professional methodological center.
Professional support, programs and funds for development and innovation. As a result
of the increase in academic independence and responsibility, a growing need for external
pedagogical support appeared. One of the most important educational processes of the 1990s
was the strengthening of the pedagogical service system at the local, regional and national
level. For example, pedagogical service institutes have been set up in the country’s 20
counties, which directly offer advising, documentation and training support to the schools.
A few significant, large-scale development programs aiming at increasing the
adaptability and innovative capacity of the educational system, modernizing education, and
helping to close the gap between Hungarian and European standards, radically influenced the
changes in Hungarian education in the 1990s. Parts of these programs have been financed
from money strictly earmarked for professional development, the funding of which was
guaranteed by the Public Education Act. Under this law, a defined part of the state funding
that local governments receive for education, has to be spent on development goals that are
16
annually designated by the state in advance. Schools and school principals can mostly obtain
these funds, which are generally distributed in the form of earmarked subsidies, through a
grants proposal process. Between 1997 and 2001 these kinds of funds earmarked for
providing professional development have made up between 3.5–4% of all public education
expenses. A smaller, but growing part of these funds is being distributed for development
purposes by entities organized at the regional level.
Centralized and local innovation funds making it possible for schools to receive
financial support to implement their own development ideas have existed in Hungary since
the end of the 1980s. For example, the Public Foundation for the Modernization of Public
Education (KOMA), which was established in the mid-1990s, has distributed HUF 300-400
million per year in the form of grants under the authority of a body whose members were
delegated by the Minister of Education. This body chooses its priorities (concerning the
development of certain areas) in a professionally independent manner, but in accordance with
the governmental policies (for more details about this and other funds for innovative support,
as well as programs see section 2.2).
1.2 The main quantitative and qualitative results of the past decade
The changes that took place in the 1990s produced numerous results, however, at the same
time a number of problems – described later – also appeared. The following section will
summarize the most important results.
1.2.1 Changes concerning participation in education
One of the most significant results of the changes in the 1990s is the improvement in
educational participation of individuals over the age of 16, and the related significant
improvement of the qualification level of school graduates. In 1991 only 62.4% of 17 year
olds and 25.8 % of 18 year olds were in school, by 1998 this rate had improved to 62.9% and
49.2% respectively.
The significant increase of the level of education of young people leaving school
illustrates the positive trends. While in 1990 only 10.6% of students exiting the school system
had higher education degrees, and 18.8% had secondary school diplomas, by 1998 those
percentages had risen to 17.8% and 35.3% respectively. The rate of those who only had 8-
years of primary education dropped from 27.2% to 14.8% during this time, and the rate of
those who had no professional education decreased from 38.8% to 30.1%. Special attention is
to be devoted to the improvement from 3.1% to 16.5% in the rate of people who found a job
after graduation (see Table 2).
17
Table 2
Graduation numbers and rates from the education system according to the highest degree,
1990–1998 (%)
Degree 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998
Higher Education 10.6 10.1 9.9 9.3 11.0 13.8 15.3 16.3 17.8
Total
Matriculation 18.8 22.2 24.3 30.3 30.4 30.3 30.9 32.2 35.3
Examinations
High School 4.9 7.5 7.6 9.4 9.3 11.3 11.7 11.7 12.0
Vocational
10.8 11.5 13.0 17.2 14.3 10.8 7.8 7.4 6.8
Secondary School
Professional
Education after 3.1 3.2 3.7 3.7 6.8 8.2 11.4 13.1 16.5
Matriculation
Vocational
Apprentice 33.9 33.1 36.5 33,3 33.6 33.5 32.2 30.8 25.8
School
Vocational
2.8 2.9 3.2 5.1 6.4 7.2 5.5 4.4 3.0
Training School
8 grades 27.2 24.3 20.3 18.2 15.1 12.1 12.7 13.0 14.8
Less than 8 grades 6.6 7.40 5.8 3.8 3.7 3.3 3.4 3.2 3.3
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100,0 100.0 100.0
Total (thousand
152.4 167.5 172.6 180.3 174.3 151.8 153.8 155.2 155.4
persons)
Of those with
Professional 61.2 60.8 66.3 68.4 71.9 73.3 72.2 72.0 69.9
Technical Degree
and without 38.8 39.2 33.7 31.6 28.1 26.7 27.8 28.0 30.1
Source: KSH, Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyv 1990-1998

Note: The parallel increase of the group which receives a degree in training after matriculation and the decrease
of the group which finishes with a vocational secondary school degree is explained by the latter group’s
increasing inclination to obtain a professional certification after matriculation.
We saw earlier how in the 1990s the rates of those individuals within each age group
who went from the 8-year primary school to secondary education that prepared them for
matriculation grew significantly (see Chart 2). In connection with this we need to stress that
the decrease in demographics and the compromising circumstances – the changes of the labor
market reduced the chances for early employment – played an important role in the
improvement of the educational participation and in school graduation rates. Actual
quantitative growth – as the higher education figures indicated – took place in higher
education. While in 1990 the number of those accepted into the first year of higher education
was less than 23,000, in 1999 this number had risen above 51,000, which is a growth of
nearly 250%. The growth in the number of individuals enrolled in a secondary school
granting matriculation was less significant (see Table 3). In addition, the greater part of the
growth took place in the second half of the 1980s when people born in the mid-1970s reached
this grade level and even a small decrease took place in the middle of the 1990s.
18
Table 3
Changes in the number of students accepted into secondary schools granting matriculation,
1985/86-1999/00

Source: OM Educational Statistics; KSH, Oktatási adatok (HO]HWHVDGDWRN
This expansion process was especially strong in the older groups of the school-age
population and in higher education. While in 1991 only 17.8% of 20-year olds were enrolled
in the school system, in 1998 this number reached 39.9%. From the perspective of higher
education, 18-22 year-olds are especially relevant; while at the beginning of the decade only
10% of them took part in higher education this rate had doubled by the end of the decade.
1.2.2 Establishing equal opportunity
The chances in educational opportunity present a contradictory picture of Hungary in the

1990s. On one hand as a result of the previously mentioned expansion process every social
group’s chance to obtain higher education obviously increased. On the other hand, however,
inequality of the different student groups also increased and the educational opportunities of
certain social groups decreased to a larger degree. The explanation for this growth in disparity
lies in the social and economic transformations that took place outside the school system and
resulted in the growth of the general disparity between various social groups (e.g. those with
higher and lower incomes), various living categories (e.g. urban and rural) and the various
regions (Eastern and Western Hungary). After the end of full-employment the situation for the
Roma minority (pushed out of the labor market on a mass scale) became especially
exacerbated. These new inequalities show up in different indices, such as the financial
situation of schools, student achievement scores, the rates of entrance to higher education, and
graduation rates.
1.2.3 The quality and relevance of education
The changes in the 1990s were partly beneficial and partly detrimental to the quality and
relevance of education. The economic crisis that exploded at the end of the previous decade
and the related budgetary constraints obviously had a negative effect on the quality of
education as well. The loss of work, and the ensuing drop in families’ financial situations
often ruined students’ learning conditions. Budgetary restrictions devastated schools’ means
of provisions and caused a reduction in teachers’ real wages. Due to the increasing
backwardness of the salaries in education compared to the salaries in other sectors, entry into
the teaching profession by high-quality employees dropped, and numerous certified teachers
19
left the teaching profession. At the same time, the strengthening of the innovation process and
new professional possibilities for the most professionally active teachers probably affected
quality positively. The renewal of the curriculum and the growth of opportunities for
institutional adaptation significantly strengthened the relevance of educational content. The
establishment and the significant expansion of the previously non-existent private, non-profit
and denominational sectors also contributed in a large degree to the adaptation of education to
the real social needs (these indices are shown in the relevant annexes).
A similarly important change from the perspective of quality and content relevance is
the change in thinking about educational quality during the 1990s. It was widely accepted by
the end of the decade and also reinforced by state policy, that during the evaluation of the
quality of education, the school results should not only be compared to the general standards,
but also to the formulated, direct expectations of the consumers of the supply.
Understandably, this accountability raises the sensitivity of the schools towards the needs
formulated by the social-economic environment, which opens up education.
1.2.4 Social participation in the reform process
The Hungarian educational reforms took place simultaneously with significant social activity.
An especially significant process of the 1990s was the strengthening of the level of activity in
civil society, as well as the establishment of numerous professional organizations interested in
various aspects of education, the establishment of institutional frameworks at every level that
make democratic participation possible, and the enrichment of forms of communication
between the government and its social partners.
It is especially necessary to mention the establishment of those bodies, which make it
possible for professional organizations and social partners to enter decision-making
concerning education. Beyond the special committees, which work beside the elected political
bodies (parliament, local governments), numerous consulting bodies have been established
whose members are partly chosen and partly delegated, and which have had significantly
influential roles in educational matters. For example, in 1993 the National Council for Public
Education (OKNT) was established, in which representatives of professional associations of
teachers, teacher training institutions, the scientific sphere, the business sector and the
Ministry of Education were included and which deals with questions of curriculum,
textbooks, tests, and in-service teacher training. The Council for Public Education Policy –
also established in 1993 – includes the representatives of the government, teachers’ unions
and professional organizations, various school maintainers, and the students and parents. This
body deals with all questions pertaining to public educational policy. Minority organizations
received quite large participatory rights related to education, meaning that before any major
public educational decisions are made in connection to minorities, agreement must be reached
with the National Minority Committee that represents minorities, as well as with the various
minority self-governments.
At the regional level the institutional forums of regional planning that were
established in the mid-1990s, and those bodies that arrange the distribution of the regional
development resources guarantee the possibility to involve the representatives of civil society
and the social partners beyond the usual forums of the democratic institutional system. At the
institutional level, the most important institution of participation is the school board, which
includes the teaching staff, students, parents, and the representatives of the school maintainer.
The involvement of the social partners into the decision-making process is especially strong
in the field of vocational education. At the national level the most important participatory
forum is the National Council for Vocational Education (OKT) in which the representatives
of the government, the school maintainers, employers’ organizations, economic chambers,
20
and employees are present. This body has an important role in the establishment of the
content and the qualification system of vocational education, as well as the distribution of
funds for the development of vocational education. Such bodies function at the county level,
as well.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, governmental policy has been consciously trying to
strengthen the institutionalization of professional self-organization. By applying for
registration with the Ministry of Education, the professional organizations dealing with
education can obtain state support allocated through a competitive process, as well as
delegated authority within the aforementioned advisory organizations.
1.3 The main experiences of the reform period
The changes in public education in Hungary in the 1990s resulted in a sizeable number of
useful experiences. As an OECD report prepared in 2000 stated: “The situation in Hungary is
truly unique because it is trying to transform a traditional, rather conservative, centralized
schooling system into a modern, competitive, market-driven, decentralized, educational
service. It has been a difficult transition process utilizing a variety of strategies including:
pre-service and in-service training, privatization and special incentive grants to motivate staff
and inspire leadership. A number of countries may find their experience a useful laboratory to
guide their own journeys of innovation”.
First of all, it is worthwhile to note the experience that there is an enormous potential
for innovation in the system of public education, which is able to develop in a couple of years
if freed up and if this process of evolution is consciously supported with the proper financial
tools. At the same time this potential is necessarily uneven. While certain institutions or
branches of the public education system react with enormous activity to the policy that
inspires innovation, others stay passive and shut themselves off from innovation. It was
characteristic for those innovation policies that were followed by the Hungarian educational
policies of the 1990s, that instead of a centrally directed, comprehensive reform including
every element of the system, it built on isolated local initiatives that were spreading out
gradually. This strategy had numerous advantages, but also considerable disadvantages, which
were exposed quickly by analysts of the Hungarian processes. One advantage, for example, is
that previously unknown capacities of innovation may be exposed. At the same time a
disadvantage is, for example, that the quality of the result of changes is difficult to control,
and lower quality innovations can cause damage in the short term.
It is also important to point out that certain methods – such as in-service teacher
training and the wide-ranging use of telecommunication equipment – can play a key role in
policies aimed at the renewal of public education. It may be even more important to note that
social and professional communication becomes extremely valuable during changes
restructuring the usual conditions to a significant extent. An examination of the processes in
Hungary in the 1990s reveals foremost the extraordinarily intensive professional
communication and the richness of communication and negotiation forums, which
institutionalized such communication.
Hungarian experiences show that change can only take place through an intensive
learning process on the part of participants. Only in this way is it possible to counteract the
natural opposition to, and the natural sense of insecurity caused by, changes, and to construct
new collective forms of behavior to replace previous institutionalized patterns. Of the several
examples, we will only mention a few. The need to write proposals in order to access
financial funds requires a level of professional activity in the schools and among teachers that
can be attained only after several years of collective learning. School-level debates and
negotiations on the content of education – as opposed to former strictly centralized curriculum
21
supervision and conditions – has necessitated the use of new concepts and the learning of new
behavioral patterns for teachers. The successful regulation of independent local actors through
indirect administrative means – especially financial motivators – was mastered by the central
administration only after a decade-long learning process. The understanding of more
sophisticated relations in the decentralized environment often requires serious mental
adjustment, the working out of new cognitive constructions, and a sense of understanding on
the part of decision makers.3 A long process of learning led to the experience of
acknowledging that the use of market-styled regulations and material incentives (e.g., in in-
service training for teachers) require longer periods of time for their effects to be felt within
the system. This is in contrast to the use of direct bureaucratic regulation. In the former case,
the measure of the level of success of an initiative may take several years.
Particularly rich are Hungarian experiences regarding the response of the education
system and the teaching profession to a new curricular system, which makes the development
and adaptation of programs at the institutional level a common occurrence and thus changes
the tasks of central administration. The Hungarian example clearly shows that the advance of
local-level program development does not decrease, but instead increases the significance of
national level program development, although it does change the professional content of the
latter. Local-institutional program development and adaptation having become common has
led to a dramatic increase in the need for external professional assistance. The central
administration in Hungary was inadequately prepared to provide such assistance. Experience
shows that it is easier to create the funds for increasing external professional assistance than it
is to create the necessary professional capacity and competence. For example, the national
level evaluation of new textbooks appearing on the rapidly developing textbook market, or in-
service training programs appearing on the new training market, require a new group of
experts, which will take several years to assemble.
Among the wealth of new experiences, it is perhaps worth emphasizing those related
to the changes in the school structure and the expansion of secondary education – even though
these changes occurred in a way similar to the experiences of other countries, thus they are
not completely unique to Hungary. The lengthening of general primary education and the
growth of the number and proportion of those participating in education granting the
matriculation – goals which enjoy nearly consensual support – have been accompanied by
adaptation-related tensions in the public education system, the effects of which can be felt in
all areas, including curriculum development, teacher training, the operation of the
examination system and the social service system within the educational sphere. In Hungary
external socio-economic processes falling outside the scope of public education policy have
defined expansion (e.g., the collapse of heavy industry, which supported early vocational
education, or demographic decline). One of the most significant experiences related to this
issue is that the expansion of education has become a question, which cannot be dealt with
solely by the education sector. Decisions related to this problem must be part of a
comprehensive national strategy that covers economic and social development.
3
For example, the separation of professional regulation from financial support – which is one of the conditions
for school independence – necessitated the ability to differentiate between pedagogical and material
interpretations, which had not been as important in the past. One of the characteristic examples of this is the
concept of the “number of acknowledged hours of instructions”, the meaning of which shifts when viewed
through the lens of financial considerations (the school receives funding for the teaching of x hours of
mathematics, but can organize more if it wishes), as opposed to the lens of the needs of students (the students
receive x hours of mathematics per week).
22
1.4 Major problems and challenges
Those problems and challenges that the Hungarian educational system needs to face at the
beginning of the 21st century greatly resemble those that other similarly developed countries
must face. These challenges, however, show up in different forms and sizes because of the
specific attributes of the country. A large part of the problems is related to the difficult
economic crisis that struck the country at the beginning of the 1990s – in a similar way to the
other countries of Central and Eastern Europe – as well as to the dramatic social and
economic transformations taking place during the decade. Most of the challenges relate
strongly to the country’s aspirations to become a full member of the European Union as soon
as possible. The most significant problems can be summarized in the following way.
The strengthening of the role of education in improving economic competitiveness and
solving unemployment. One of the biggest setbacks of the economic transformation was the
end of previous full-employment and the cessation of activity of a significant number of
people. The development of a relatively high level of inactivity is one of the biggest problems
of Hungarian society, and governmental policy gives education and training a significant role
in combating it. The low level of activity is partly related to the fact that a significant portion
of young people exiting from the school system do not have the skills needed on the labor
market and cannot fit into the modern economic structure. The country’s aspiration to access
the European Union and the economy’s appearance in the European competitive arena poses
enormous challenges for school graduates, as well as younger and older people already on the
labor market. According to the latest international comparative studies, (OECD SIALS) the
Hungarian adult population’s skills are observably out of date, a situation that needs to be
addressed by the school system. For these reasons, goals such as the development of basic
skills necessary for finding a role in the labor market, the improvement of transition from
school to work, and the more effective stressing of knowledge needed in modern technology,
receive more attention in the learning and teaching processes within public education.
Making the role of education more effective in strengthening social cohesion. The
economic and social transition and the formation of a market economy, as we already
mentioned, added to the social inequalities, and this trend is likely to continue in the future. In
the sphere of continual unemployment, the number of impoverished people increased, as did
the number of those who belong to the layer in danger of being torn away from society. As we
already mentioned, it became an especially large problem to socially reintegrate the Roma
minority that was pushed out of the labor market more than any other layer. Added to this,
while several new, previously non-existent learning opportunities were opened up, the
Hungarian school system became more selective than ever before. This is why Hungarian
governmental policies attempt to give education a significant role in correcting social
inequality, strengthening social cohesion, and primarily in the social integration of failing
layers of society, especially the Roma minority.
The greatest challenge in this respect is answering the following two questions (1)
how much is education able to add to the maintenance and strengthening of the social
cohesion? and (2) what are the tools needed to complete this task? The next decade is likely to
witness the continuation of the efforts begun to create those kinds of new programs, methods
of organizing institutions and motivating conditions of interests that help the educational and
social integration of the most disadvantaged learning groups.
The pedagogical handling of the increasingly diverse learning population and making
the fight against school failures more effective. The growth of the heterogeneity of the
learning population causes problems related to but not identical with the problems mentioned
in the previous paragraph. The effects of school expansion are such that learning groups
participate in higher secondary education, which did not do so previously. The extension of
23
basic education and especially the increase in the age of compulsory education to 18 years are
going to considerably strengthen the growth trend of the learning population’s heterogeneity.
This situation creates an enormous pedagogical challenge for the institutions and teachers that
are not prepared to deal with students who are less motivated and often reject the traditional
forms of learning. A significant task for the public education policy of the next decade will be
to develop the necessary pedagogical capacity of teachers and schools and to work out the
new pedagogical procedures and institutional organizational patterns for this task.
The renewal of educational content and facilitating the methodological development of
teaching and learning. The question of revising the culture of pedagogical methodology is
strongly related to problems mentioned in the previous paragraph, yet it merits individual
attention. In Hungary, as in many other countries, a type of traditional methodological culture
dominates that is based on frontal teaching and the memorization of subject knowledge. At
the same time – as we will see later – many initiatives were begun to renew the aims of
pedagogical methodology. The dissemination of these initiatives within the Hungarian school
system ran up against organizational, regulatory and mental barriers. Overcoming these
barriers will be an especially important task of the next decade. An especially large challenge
is that the simultaneous and mutually reinforcing activities of such different subsystems are
needed, such as initial and in-service teacher training, curriculum development, systems that
support institutional innovation, or educational management.
Guaranteeing educational quality and the development of the evaluation function. In
Hungarian public education – as we have seen – there are significant quality problems that
can be traced back to numerous reasons. To solve these problems the coordinated use of
various tools is needed. One of the significant challenges of the next decade will be how to
guarantee the effective implementation of the evaluation function over the entire public
education system, and how to develop and work the various quality assurance measures into a
coherent system. Since unusually new professional initiatives were born in the 1990s in
Hungary, (e.g. quality control approaches used in the economic sphere adopted in public
education), professional evaluation of these initiatives will remain an important task for
Hungarian public education, as well as working out the experiences gained and generally
institutionalizing pilot initiatives and building them into a system.
More effective management of resources. Similar to other countries from the former
Soviet block, a typical aspect of Hungarian public education is the simultaneous lack and
waste of resources. Although the country spends a relatively high rate of its national income
on education, some of the indicators that show the financial provisions for education (e.g.
teacher salaries compared to the per capita GDP) are low compared to international averages.
At the same time the indicators that show financial effectiveness, such as the number of
students per teacher is also low. There are quite a large number of low-attendance schools,
and the superfluous capacity that followed the fall in demographics did not produce an
equally large number of school closings. The reaction to the drop in student numbers by the
Hungarian public education system was to find solutions to maintain the previously existing
capacity, for example the extension of services (e.g. longer periods of education). One of the
biggest challenges faced by Hungarian public education is answering the question of whether
the problems of material needs (e.g. low wages, deteriorating infrastructure) can be solved by
attracting more external sources or a more effective use of resources existing within the
system.
Improving teachers’ salaries. Probably the biggest contradiction in the reformation of
Hungarian education is that the numerous renewals and changes that led to innovative
solutions took place under circumstances characterized by a dramatic drop in the living
standards of teachers. In the middle of the 1990s – as previously mentioned – due to the
contemporary budgetary restriction policy, an enormous drop in real wages took place in the
24
entire public sphere, and therefore in education as well (see the tables on teachers’ salaries in
Annex 3 containing statistical data). By the end of the decade, the gradual improvement of real
wages began, but the amount was not enough to possibly compensate for the harm suffered.
As a result of historically developed institutional and structural constraints there are
more teachers employed in the Hungarian public education system than in other countries’
systems of comparable student populations, making it considerably more difficult to rapidly
improve teachers’ wages. Therefore, appropriate teacher wages can only be guaranteed if the
rates of public education expenses are given a higher value than in other countries. Changing
those institutional and structural forces, which cause higher demands concerning the
workforce would require significant institutional reforms and cause a high degree of social
pressure.
Making educational supervision and management more successful. An especially
significant question is how to guarantee the coherence, transparency and effective operation
of the public education system in a decentralized environment that is characterized by a large-
scale independence of local participants. Although decentralization has had an enormously
positive effect on the system’s ability to adapt and innovate, to make the content of learning
and teaching more relevant, and to increase public control, as well as establishing competition
that causes quality improvement at numerous points in the system, a number of new
difficulties have also appeared. Inequalities are increasing, the quality improvement of certain
segments of the system is causing drops in quality in other parts, and often the effectiveness
of the use of resources is questionable. In a decentralized environment the role of local
management is growing considerably and state control can only affect the development of the
system successfully through the rich methodology of indirect intervention.
Owing to all these factors, the improvement in the quality of administration and
management, as well as the development of administrative means that can be employed in a
decentralized environment have become a significant task. A characteristic trend of the 1990s
was the content revision and the spreading of public educational management training, which
will in all probability continue in the near future. These trends also played an important role in
the increasingly acknowledged importance of the development of information and
communication networks, the use of regulatory methods (e.g. the regulation of the transition
between basic and middle education), and the question of information management in general.
2. Educational content and learning strategies for the 21st century

2.1 Curriculum development, fundamental principles and requirements
2.1.1 The decision-making process: levels and actors in determining educational content
In Hungary, decision-making and responsibilities in determining educational content are

divided between the central, local and institutional levels. The regional level plays a weak
role, partly due to the country’s small size, and partly due to the particular development of the
public administrative system. It is also important to point out that the distribution of decision-
making responsibility may be different in regards to the various elements of the system of
instruments having an impact on educational content (educational goals, curricular content,
requirements, textbooks, etc.). The following section considers the role the three levels play in
the establishment of educational content.
25
2.1.1.1 Decision-making rights and responsibilities at the central level
The Parliament passes the basic laws, which define the various levels of the educational
system’s operation: the acts on public education, vocational education, and higher education.
Each of these also significantly defines the content of teaching and learning conducted in the
educational institutions. The public education act passed in 1993 was modified on several
occasions during the 1990s, bringing changes to content regulation.
The public education law grants the Government regulatory power over the national
core program of pre-school education, the National Core Curriculum and the establishment
and publication of matriculation exam regulations.4 The basic documents regarding content
regulation are not issued by the responsible branch minister, but by the government, which
has a specific significance within the Hungarian context. The changes brought about by the
National Core Curriculum assigned numerous tasks to the other ministries involved with
public education, especially to the Ministry of Labor,5 which used to be responsible for
vocational education and to the Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for the entire
local governmental public administration.
The minister responsible for the branch with the most widespread decision-making
powers and the most tasks is presently called the Minister of Education. The Minister of
Education (previously called the Minister of Culture and Public Education) presents those
bills and decrees, which establish the legal framework for content regulation to the Parliament
and the Government. Usually once in every governmental cycle the ministry prepares the –
usually medium-term – development plans concerning human resource development (and
including the development of public education as well), which also influences the alterations
of the curriculum and testing systems. The branch ministry provides for the central documents
of content regulation (the National Core Curriculum and the framework curricula), which
assures every Hungarian child the opportunity to receive the minimaly-required education.
The minister issues educational guidelines for institutes that deal with specific educational
tasks (special needs education, national and ethnic minorities, bilingual teaching, and art
education).6 The minister regularly – at least once in every three years – evaluates the
experiences that are related to the implementation and use of the National Core Curriculum
and if needed initiates the necessary modifications with the Government. The minister
regulates the conditions and the procedure of qualifying books and materials as textbooks and
teaching materials, the publication of the annual textbook register, the procedure of the
removal of an item from the register and the system for textbook support (in this field, the
consultation bodies have an important role in preparing decisions).7 The textbook market,
which is taken into consideration concerning content changes, will be regulated by a separate
law in the future. The Minister of Education has already presented the bill to the Parliament.
The minister is taking responsibility – through the National Public Education Center
for Evaluation and Testing (OKÉV) – of the professional control and evaluation of the
pedagogical methodology in schools on a national, regional, and county level. Besides the
previously mentioned points, OKÉV participates in organizing the basic knowledge exam and
the matriculation exam, decides on applications for legal redress, and administers tasks related
to the National Register for Experts and Testing (OSZVN).8 OKÉV provides – on the basis of
an accreditation procedure – permission to launch and apply curricula that differ from the
framework curriculum.
4
Ktv., 94. § paragraph (3).
5
In 1998 responsibility for vocational education was handed over to the Ministry of Education.
6
Ktv., 93. § paragraph (1) a), b).
7
Ktv., 94. § paragraph (1) e).
8
Ktv., 95/A. § paragraph (2).
26
Other ministries have also received roles in the regulation of the content of education
(this mainly means the curricular and examination requirements and the textbook provision
for vocational education directly related to the ministry's responsibilities). The change in
government in 1998 saw the role of the Ministry of Education increase, as due to the closing
of the Ministry of Labor the governmental directive tasks regarding vocational education were
transferred to the Ministry of Education. The unification of public education and vocational
education responsibilities under one ministry decreased the number of governmental actors
and simplified coordination.
Consultative bodies have received an important role in national-level regulation. The
1990s saw several changes take place in their legally guaranteed powers related to content
regulation. The most significant national consultative body on issues of educational content
was the aforementioned OKNT. Its task is to take a standpoint on issues concerning
curriculum regulation, to follow and judge the publication and implementation of the National
Core Program for Pre-school education, the National Core Curriculum, and the framework
curricula, and to make recommendations on their supervision. As we have seen, it has an
important role in articulating opinions and preparing decisions on textbook provision and
textbook authorization, matriculation exams, and in-service training for teachers. It also
monitors the development of the quality of public education, and provides an annual report on
the state of public education.9
Before submitting the National Core Program for Pres-school Education and the
National Core Curriculum to the government, the Minister is obliged to ask for the opinion of
the OKNT. The legal responsibilities of this body regarding the acceptance of curricula
changed several times during the 1990s. The 1993 Public Education Act granted it the right to
state opinions. An amendment of the law in 1996 granted the body the right of agreement,
while a 1999 amendment once again gave the body opinion stating and recommendation
rights. At the same time, these rights strengthened in regards to issues concerning the content
of education. In educational matters affecting minorities – as mentioned above – the
agreement of the National Minority Committee must be sought.
2.1.1.2. Decision-making rights and responsibilities at the local level
Regulation by the central authorities (mentioned in the first section) of work conducted in
educational institutions is performed in only an indirect manner: in the 1990s schools, and to
a lesser degree their maintainers were granted wide responsibilities in the definition of
educational content. More than 90% of school maintainers are local governments. Their
number – as we have observed above – is rather high in Hungary, while their average size
(based on the number of residents in their area of authority) is somewhat low.
The Public Education Act grants the school maintainer responsibilities for approving
the public education institution’s pedagogical program (as well as the local curriculum), the
execution of tasks included within such, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of
pedagogical and professional work.10 Since the local governments, in most cases, do not have
the appropriate professional apparatus to handle such tasks at an acceptable level, they are
obliged to involve external actors. They approve pedagogical programs on the basis of the
opinions of nationally accredited experts, and they are also obliged to make use of outside
experts in respect to school evaluations.
9
10
Ktv.,102. § paragraph (2).]
27
2.1.1.3. Decision-making rights and responsibilities at the institutional level
A comparative study of 22 OECD countries shows that in the middle of the 1990s, Hungary
was mostly characterized by the delegation of curricular decisions to the school level.11 The
most important decisions influencing the content of education – from the selection of
textbooks, through the organization of fields of knowledge into subjects, to the planning of
education programs – were all granted to the institutional level. Curricular decisions are made
partly within the professional sphere of autonomy of the teachers or faculty, and partly borne
in the course of negotiations with the school maintainer in the framework of the National Core
Curriculum or the framework curricula.
The majority of curricular decisions were delegated to the sphere of authority
(decision making and responsibility) of the teaching staff by the 1993 Public Education Act
on the legal level and by the introduction of the National Core Curriculum in practice. The
opinion of the community of teachers is definitive in regards to the development of school
subjects, the choice of programs offered by the Ministry and public education service
providing institutions, or the preparation of a completely new, independent local curriculum.
The school faculty also adopts the most important document on the content of work in school
–the pedagogical program.12 The Public Education Act also declares that every teacher has the
right to choose curriculum materials, the methods of teaching, and the utilized textbooks and
teaching materials – as long as they remain within the framework of the national documents
and the local curriculum.13 Teachers may also initiate the use of books not included in the
register of textbooks published by the minister on an annual basis. The definition of central
exam criteria and the regulation of evaluation are state criteria, but central examination
criteria are supplemented by local criteria found within the local curricula.14
In most schools the school board functions as an active consultation body, which
serves as a forum for cooperation between the teaching staff, parents, students, and school
maintainers. According to the provisions of the Public Education Act, the opinion of the
school board must be consulted in order to have the school's pedagogical program accepted
and in cases where teachers wish to use textbooks not included in the register of textbooks.
2.1.1.4. Changes in the sharing of responsibilities
The plurality of decision-making authorization at the local and institutional level creates
favorable conditions for pedagogical innovation and quick response to the needs of school
clients. At the same time the Hungarian content regulation system is often criticized,
particularly for the difficulty in establishing cooperation amongst schools and the weakening
of transferability and transparency in the education system. Partly as a response to this, the
1999 amendment to the Public Education Act expanded the central content regulation role,
i.e., that of the Ministry of Education, in terms of the sphere of tasks and authority. Regarding
issues of the content of teaching and organization the 1999 amendment to the Public
Education Act will somewhat decrease the significance of the school level from 2001: from
thereon framework curricula will define (in an ascending system) the content of work
conducted in schools by educational levels and – in secondary education – by school types.
11
Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators 1998, OECD, Paris, 1998.
12
13
Ktv., 19. § paragraph (1), b) c).
14
28
2.1.2 Curricular planning and curriculum preparation
The typical characteristics of curricular planning and curriculum development in Hungary are
basically defined by two-tiered curriculum regulations, which were established in the mid-
1990s. As we have seen, the National Core Curriculum (NAT) – published by the government
in 1995 – and the framework curricula – published by the Minister of Education in 2000 –
constitute the central level of regulation. The local level of regulation is created by the local
pedagogical programs of schools and by the local curriculum contained in those. The latter
were prepared within three years (1995-1998), and soon after – following an evaluation by
experts – were approved by school maintainers. By September 1, 2001, schools have to adjust
their local curricula to the framework curriculum published in 2000. Below, the characteristic
elements of centrally and locally regulated documents – primarily the ones that show the
specific Hungarian development – are to be described.
2.1.2.1 Central curriculum documents
2.1.2.1.1 Common basic principles
Although the two current central documents, the National Core Curriculum and the
framework curricula were developed in different time periods and had somewhat different
aims, a number of common basic principles may be enumerated. These are the following:
• One of the most important basic principles for curricula in the 1990s is the absence of
politics. Curricula may not serve a single political affiliation or ideology.
• The central curricula in general directly prescribe the transmission of only few values,
the most important of which are democratic, humanistic, and European values, the
development of national (ethnic) identities, and respect for the lifestyles, culture, and
traditions of other peoples.
• Both central curriculum documents are of a core nature, which means they do not
strive to define everything to be learned in school. They only contain the obligatory
educational content for everyone and developmental requirements that can be
expected of everyone.
• Practical orientation is the core principle for the curricula, meaning they lean heavily
on results gained in the field of content development in innovative Hungarian schools.
They also stress that the curriculum document should have a real effect on the
academic and educational work in schools.
• By moving away from knowledge-centralization, the curricula in Hungary (in fact: the
whole Hungarian education) have taken a significant step towards skill-development,
thus, “instrumental knowledge.”
• Aside from the scientifically derived classical educational content, elements show up
which serve the personal development and social orientation of students.
• One priority is the development of the student’s personality, which is implemented
primarily through paying more attention to age characteristics.
• In the documents, the teaching of so-called key competencies (native and foreign
language communication abilities, information gathering and processing skills,
creative and critical thinking, learning abilities, adaptive and flexible behavior,
physical and psychological fitness, and cooperation skills) appear as the most
important aim for increasing students’ prospects on the labor market.
• Both central curricula follow the principle of reducing the amount of knowledge to be
learned in order to alleviate the excessive burden on students (it is worthwhile to note
that in reality the application of this principle has only a limited success).
29
• The new content regulation does not consider the two central curricula to be closed
systems. The review of NAT, which is obligatory every three years, assures the
continuity and correction of the curriculum development. In the case of the framework
curricula, the continuous curriculum accreditation (the acceptance of newly created
curricula at the national level) serves this end.
2.1.2.1.2 Characteristics of the National Core Curriculum
The NAT is a core curriculum, the goal of which is to define the common requirements for
general education. From a curricular planning standpoint there are a number of extremely
novel characteristics that clearly separate this document from the previous curriculum
documents: in the NAT a new paradigm was born that was previously non-existent in
Hungary.
The first part of the NAT describes the role the document plays in the content
regulation of compulsory education.15 The second part contains the requirements of the
individual fields of knowledge, divided into short, general parts, and longer, detailed sections.
In NAT, the detailed developmental requirements are broken down into three closely
connected parts:
• Materials to be taught. Content considered being absolutely necessary to the
development of expertise, abilities, skills and attitudes.
• Developmental requirements, competencies, and abilities. This section lists those
forms of activity (realized through cognitive and actual acts) by means of which the
material might be learnt and taught.
• Minimal achievements. This section defines the lowest level of students’ expertise,
skills, and general abilities that are necessary for the students to progress and to
continue with successful learning.
As we mentioned above, NAT differs significantly from the previous, centralized

curriculum documents, and contains numerous, new, non-traditional elements. The
following items need to be mentioned:
• The common and compulsory requirements of educational work are uniformly defined
(originally for 10 grades), as being independent of school type. Requirements are,
therefore, attached to age and not to individual programs or school types.
• For the sake of increasing educational integration, NAT does not formulate the
curriculum contents into subjects, but rather into comprehensive fields of knowledge,
and thereby gives schools the opportunity to determine their subjects independently
and to adopt the education of integrated, rather than traditional subjects.
• NAT is not only concerned with the revision of teaching materials in individual fields
of knowledge, but also with establishing new segments of knowledge (behavioral
science, civic and economic education, information technology, film and media
studies, dance, and drama) which were previously not included in the Hungarian
curriculum.
• Another important innovation of NAT is to establish so-called inter-disciplinary
fields, such as communication, physical and mental health, environmental education,
career choice, knowledge of Hungary and Hungarian culture and European dimensions
in the interest of widening the subject area of the system. All of these areas have a
place in the education of every field of knowledge.
15
In governmental decree 63/2000 (V.5.) section I of the National Core Curriculum was modified, but section II
was left untouched.
30
• For the sake of witnessing the progress of students’ abilities at appropriately varied
learning rates, NAT’s formulated requirements do not follow yearly progressions, but
rather larger intervals (testing of elementary requirements takes place at the end of the
6th and 10th grades, the two main pedagogical cycles, whilst detailed requirements are
tested at the end of the 4th, 6th, 8th and 10th grades).
• In the interest of maintaining a flexible alignment of local expectations, students’
socio-cultural identities, and their levels of development, NAT strived to make one
segment of the timeframe (approximately 50-70%) sufficient for the completion of the
common and compulsory requirements, making it possible for individual schools to
establish their own supplementary curriculum content.
• The length of time to be spent on different fields of knowledge is not divided into
exact lesson hours, but into approximate proportions, defining only the upper and
lower limits in order to increase the freedom of the schools to establish their own
schedules (See Annex 2).
2.1.2.1.3 Characteristics of the framework curriculum
The framework curricula established by the Minister of Education in 2000 were a result of the
1999 modifications of the Public Education Act. Article 8. Para. (8) of the Act states: “The
framework curricula based on the fields of knowledge defined in the National Core
Curriculum guarantee the unity of content of school education in areas determining general
education.” The modifications of the act prescribed the issuing of several framework
curricula, which made it possible to plan education following the eighth year in various types
of schools (high school, vocational secondary school, vocational apprentice school) according
to different aims, educational content, and in some cases different subject course numbers.
According to the legislative intentions the framework curriculum – complementing the
NAT – is a central document of the two-tiered content regulation system, which makes it
possible to strengthen the educational system’s integration, systematized operations and
permeability. In its typological approach, the framework curriculum is a unifying curriculum
strengthening central responsibility and input orientation, which signifies a returning swing by
the “curriculum pendulum” from the extremely liberal NAT towards the center.
The framework curricula are characterized by the following basic principles:
• They fit regulations into the existing, or rather dominant school system – as opposed to
NAT – by regulating up to the end of the 12th, rather than the 10th year of study (in
Hungary higher secondary education ends with the 12th grade)
• They adjust the articulation of elements of knowledge to the distribution of the
qualifications of teachers by defining concrete teaching subjects instead of
comprehensive fields of knowledge (that is to say, they return to the system of
subjects)
• In the interest of strengthening development-orientation they determine the types of
tasks and activity formats, which ensure skill and capacity development.
• In order to unify educational content, they set a compulsory minimum number of
lesson hours for the teaching of individual subjects.
• In the interest of conformity with local demands and student characteristics, the school
system is allowed to freely plan lesson hours – which are fewer in number during the
first years, and are more numerous later on. After the eighth year of study, it defines
by school type (within the program type) different educational goals and requirements,
at the same time striving to establish horizontal permeability within the school system
(with the exception of vocational training schools containing approximately one-
fourth of the student population).
31
• They organize the new fields of knowledge introduced by the NAT (e.g. dance, drama,
film culture-media studies, behavioral science) into freely planned (as independent
subjects or to be worked into other academic subjects) 1-2-semester long subject
modules that are to be taught within the indicated time period.
There were more revisions introduced in the structure and descriptions of the curriculum
documents by the framework curricula.
• The framework curricula define the school types’ goals and main tasks and add the
mandatory subject order and on a grade-basis the minimally required lesson hours spent
on the education of given subjects, as well as the total number of fixed hours of
instruction and the freely planned lesson framework.
• The main part is made up of the framework curricula for individual subjects, which
consist of a unit covering the entire learning cycle and a unit repeated for every grade
level. In the section dealing with the whole of the learning cycle, we may find the
definition of goals for the teaching of the given subject, the main tasks involved, and the
so-called developmental criteria. The developmental criteria communicate the skills-
development tasks to be executed by the school in the given subject area. The repeated
framework units are composed of three parts:
o Introductory forms of activity. This new curricular unity contains those
cognitive transactions, procedures of gathering and processing information,
verbal, manual, written, motion-related and other activities, which “are
entered” by grades and have a decisive role in skill development and the
acquisition of knowledge implied in the different subjects.
o Topics, contents. This traditional curricular unit communicates the educational
contents of the subject. According to the curriculum writers, the teaching of the
content and the performance of related criteria tasks use up approximately 80%
of the time available for the teaching the subject. The remaining 20% is to be
used by the school to teach other content elements.
o The section entitled Progression Conditions lists the activities, the knowledge
and practice of which, are important conditions of the student’s reliable
knowledge and serves as the basis for the acquisition of the contents for the
grades to follow. This curricular unit provides orientation for the evaluation
processes present in the schools’ local curriculum.
The legal regulations concerning the implementation of the framework curricula

brought important innovations from the perspective of content regulation. The ministerial
decree enacted to this end regulates the preparation of schools’ local curricula, and especially
the regulations concerning school-level deviation from the central curricular documents in
much greater detail than the previous regulations.
To ensure that the operation of schools working on the basis of alternative programs or
successful local curricula (which are different from the framework curriculum) would not be
endangered, and that valuable new curricular innovations may be continuously built into the
schools’ local curricula, many different forms of deviations from the framework curriculum
are permitted. For instance, in spite of restoring the subject system, the regulation explicitly
promotes the development of integrated subjects. In addition, as mentioned several times
already, the possibility has opened up to have new curricula deviating from the framework
curriculum on a large scale accredited at the national level. Among other things, this was
made necessary by the relatively large scale circulation throughout Hungary of the traditional,
foreign alternative pedagogical programs (e.g. Waldorf/Steiner, Montessori, Rogers, Freinet),
32
and a number of valuable, innovative programs that cannot be inserted into the unified
framework that appeared and spread through the schools in the 1990s.
Those curricula that deviate in terms of subject structure, lesson numbers or content,
can be built into the school’s pedagogical program if they are approved in the framework of
an accreditation procedure and if OKÉV gives the permission for its application. The approval
process may be initiated for an entire school curriculum or for individual subject curricula.16
The person who prepared the submitted curriculum (subject curriculum) is the only individual
who may initiate the issuing of these types of application permits. In this program-
accreditation process the submitted curriculum is tested for its conformity with the public
education act, whether it is applicable to the education process, whether it contains the goals,
materials, requirements of education, and the primary methodologies, or tools of elaboration.
OKÉV prepares a curricular catalogue of the curricula and subject curricula that have been
granted an application permit. This catalogue contains – among other things – the name of the
curriculum (subject curriculum), its goals, the permit number, the school type in which it can
be applied, a short description of the content requirements and special provisions about the
introduction.17
Individual schools are allowed to apply programs that have an application permit after
receiving a launch permit. Schools that want to build a curriculum (subject curriculum) that
has an application permit into their pedagogical program can apply for these permits. In this
institutional-accreditation process it is examined, whether the school requesting the permit
has the special provisions to introduce the curriculum that the curricular catalogue defines.18
A school that has a launch permit and does not employ the framework curriculum, but rather
employs a curriculum with an application permit is obliged to relay this fact in writing to the
students (or to the parents if the students are minors) before they are enrolled in the
institution.19
OKÉV decides on the issuing of the application permits based on the suggestion of the
recently established Curriculum Committee. OKNT defines the staff number of the
Curriculum Committee and the general aspects of its composition, and the minister appoints
the members. The Curriculum Committee is closely connected with OKNT, partly because of
the composition of the committee (two members as well as the president are also members of
OKNT), and partly because OKNT is responsible for establishing the system of approval.
Before the final decision on its recommendation, the Curriculum Committee has at least two
expert opinions prepared.20
2.1.2.2 School level programs
In educational institutions education is conducted according to the pedagogical program of the

school, according to the local curriculum, which is part of it. After the teaching staff approves
the pedagogical program it becomes valid with the approval of the school maintainer. Before
offering his approval, the maintainer is obliged to obtain an expert opinion from a source
listed in the register of experts. Schools are required to make their pedagogical program
available to the public.
The creation and acceptance of schools’ pedagogical programs is significant for the
most important actors in education. By accepting the program, the school maintainer accepts
the obligation of guaranteeing its completion, which provides the teachers with a guarantee
16
Framework curriculum Decree 12. § paragraph (1)
17
Framework curriculum decree 13. § paragraph (5) (6)
18
Framework curriculum decree 13. § paragraph (2) (3)
19
Framework curriculum decree 12. § paragraph (1)
20
Framework curriculum decree, Appendix 2
33
that their professional ideas have local (moral and financial) support. Stakeholders receive
information about the work and values of the school on the basis of this program. The
school’s professional programs guarantee that maintainers can oversee the institution and test
whether the school’s functioning is appropriate according to the respective legal provisions
and stipulations of the pedagogical program.
The Public Education Act regulates the content of the school-level pedagogical
program.21 According to this law, this document must contain the following:
• The educational principles, goals, tasks, means, and procedures of the school
• Pedagogical tasks connected to personal development
• Tasks connected to community development
• Pedagogical tasks connected to behavioral and integration-related disorders
• Programs that help failing students catch up
• Activities designed to reduce social disadvantages
• Systems that oversee, measure, evaluate and provide quality control over the
educational-instructional work taking place in schools
• Forums for the cooperation of parents, students, school teachers and dormitory
pedagogues
• The school’s local curriculum
The Public Education Act also regulates what the locally created curriculum must contain.
As mentioned earlier, this may be a curriculum created completely by the school, but in most
cases it is created externally and is adapted by the school or, in rare cases, it is accepted
without any modification. According to law, a school’s local curriculum must contain the
following:
• Subjects taught in the different grades, mandatory and optional classes, and their
required lesson hours,
• The stipulated material and requirements
• The principles of the selection of the textbooks, learning aids and teaching materials
applicable in the school
• Stipulations for passing to the next grade
• Requirements and formats of school reports and testing, as well as the forms of the
assessment and evaluation of the student’s accomplishments, behavior and diligence
• Material used in the education of minority language, history, geography, culture, and
ethnography in the school education of national and ethnic minorities
• Hungarian language learning materials for students who participate in the school
education for national and ethnic minorities, and materials aimed at forwarding
knowledge on local, national and ethnic minorities to students who do not belong to
one
As mentioned earlier, schools had to prepare their own pedagogical programs between
1995 and 1998, and they will have to perform a mandatory review and make necessary
corrections in 2001.
2.1.2.3 Manifold program concurrence
Since the implementation of the NAT and the framework curricula will take place in an
ascending manner, and thus the time period is drawn out, in the 1990s and in the first half of
the next decade the Hungarian school system has been and will be characterized by the
concurrence of different programs. In the 2001/2002 school year, the education of the first,
21
Ktv., 48.§ paragraph (1)
34
fifth and ninth grades will begin according to the new local curriculum that has been
appropriately modified by the framework curriculum. It will take four years for the newest
curriculum reform to permeate the 12-grade Hungarian educational system, and the content
regulation of the system is likely to become unified from the 2004/05 school year. By then, in
different grades of the same school there can be three types of curriculum: (1) the old, pre-
NAT, centralized curriculum (2) the local curriculum based on the NAT, and (3) the local
curriculum based on the framework curriculum. According to the obligatory application or the
chosen curriculum, not only the content of the education may be different, but the weekly
number of lessons may also vary in a given grade, which reduces the transparency of the
educational structure and makes educational organization unavoidably difficult.
Table 4
The possibility to apply various curricula for the different grades – (1998-99-2004/05)
School Year Grades

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1998/1999 N R R R R R N R R R R R
1999/2000 N N R R R R N/R N/R R R R R
2000/2001 N N N R R R N/R N/R R R R R
2001/2002 K* N N N K R N/R N/R K R R R
2002/2003 K K N N K K N/R N/R K K R R
2003/2004 K K K N K K K N/R K K K R
2004/2005 K K K K K K K K K K K K
Source: A kerettantervek alkalmazása, 2000
*A highlighted background means the introduction of local curricula into the framework, based on the
framework curricula
R – Old centralized curriculum
N – NAT based local curriculum
K – Local curriculum reviewed according to the framework curriculum
2.1.2.4 Content and timeframes
2.1.2.4.1 Proportions of fields of knowledge and elements of knowledge
One of the key issues of the wide-ranging harmonizing process of the initial introduction of
the new central curricular documents, was the division of lesson hours amongst academic
subjects (fields of knowledge). Because the NAT only contained recommendations for the
number of lessons of individual fields of knowledge (lower and upper limits given
proportionately), the actual number of lessons for a curriculum was set during a local school’s
bargaining process. However, in the case of the framework curricula, which define subject
lesson hours more precisely, national negotiations were conducted by the different actors (e.g.
professional organizations and the Ministry of Education). During this bargaining process the
stronger teachers’ organizations managed to obtain one or two extra hours for their own
subjects from the timeframe originally devoted to the schools discretion. The schools
managed to gain permission from the Ministry of Education to expand their scope of action
beyond the freely planned mandatory lessons. In grades 1-6, schools are given two weekly
lessons, and in grades 7-12, three weekly lessons, to use according to their own needs for
more intensive teaching of subjects included in the framework curriculum, or for the
instruction of new subjects not included in the framework curriculum. To avoid placing an
excessive burden on students, these lesson hours may only be used for artistic and physical
education in the lower grades. As opposed to the previous tradition, the framework curriculum
35
designates the amount of time that can be used for the teaching of individual subjects not in
weekly, but in annual time periods. It also works towards expanding the scope of action at the
institutional level, by clearly permitting the so-called “epochal” organization of the subjects,
meaning that a given subject may be taught in a certain period of the year and not throughout
the whole year. (The NAT timeframe division suggestions, as well as the framework
curriculum lesson plan can be found in Annex 2).
The central lesson plans and lesson planning suggestions published since the middle of
the 1980s are characterized by an alignment with significant international trends in regards to
the division of the timeframe. One of the decisive elements of this orientation is that the
schools’ guaranteed scope of action (the number of freely planned lessons), previously only
allowed from the 7th grade on, has been widened by the National Core Curriculum and the
framework curricula over all grades. Also in accordance with international trends, is the
appearance of information-technology – if only in a relatively small numbers of lessons – as a
new subject area, and the considerable rise in the time designated for foreign language
instruction, the efficiency of which was previously at an extremely poor level. Similarly, the
movement towards international standards has meant a sizeable shift since 1988, away from
the strong predominance of natural sciences in the Hungarian course schedule towards social
sciences. In this respect it is worthwhile to mention that in Hungary social science education
is still decidedly limited to the teaching of history, as opposed to the American-European
model, which focuses much more on current issues (social, civic, legal, etc.).
Table 5
Average percentage of class numbers by field of knowledge in the Hungarian central lesson
plans and lesson plan recommendations in the education of 12-14 year-olds (1988, 1995, and
2000 and OECD country average in 1998.)
Old Central Framework OECD

NAT
Curriculum curriculum Average
Mother Tongue 14 12 15 15
Foreign Language 7 10 11 11
Mathematics 14 12 11 13
Social Sciences 7 8 9 12
Natural Sciences 22 16 19 11
Arts 11 10 10 8
Information/technology 0 3 3 5
Technical/practical studies 5 6 4 2
Physical Education/ Sports 11 7 9 8
Other 4 0 4 5
Elective subjects 5 16 5 8
Source: Hetes óraterv az osztott általános iskolák számára (1988), NAT (1995), Az alapfokú nevelés-oktatás
kerettantervei (2000), Education at a Glance, 2000
Notes: Whereas in European countries the field of technical/practical knowledge denotes practical activities and
job orientation, Hungarian technical education involves more elements of study within the field of information-
technology. Tutorial lessons are accounted for in the “other” category, whereas in EU countries mandatory
religious lessons are classified here, which on average constitute 3% of the total number of lessons.
2.1.2.4.2 Length of the teaching year and students’ workload
The Minister of Education annually sets the schedule of the teaching year within the
academic year. The schedule denotes the starting and ending date of the academic year, the
36
time period in which academic and instructional education must take place (the teaching year
is 185 days), the dates and length of breaks, the time period for deciding on admissions
applications, for basic knowledge exams, matriculation exams, and vocational exams. Taking
into consideration the schedule set for the academic year, each school prepares a yearly work
schedule that indicates the freely planned workdays without teaching (on which internal in-
service training of the staff takes place) and school holidays.22
A school’s teaching year is built on five-day workweeks. On teaching days it is
possible to plan mandatory teaching lesson activities, optional teaching lesson activities,
activities outside teaching lessons, and individual activities. The Public Education Act
stipulates the number of mandatory, weekly lesson hours and the non-compulsory lesson
hours defined in proportion to those, whilst the framework curriculum decree regulates the
students’ maximum weekly workload. A teaching lesson in Hungary is 45 minutes.
Table 6
The mandatory and optional timeframe, and the upper limit of students’ lesson numbers after
the establishment of the framework curriculum for grades 1-12 (in lessons)
Mandatory Timeframe Optional Timeframe* Upper limit of

Ktv., 52. § (3) Ktv., 52. § (7) student workload**
Grade 1 20 +10% 2 lessons 22
Grade 3 22,5 +10% 2,25 lessons 24,5
Grade 4 22,5 +10% 2,25 lessons 24,5
Grade 5 25 +25% 6,25 lessons 27
Grade 6 25 +25% 6,25 lessons 27
Grade 7 27,5 +30% 8,25 lessons 30,5
Grade 8 27,5 +30% 8,25 lessons 30,5
Grade 9 30 +45% 13,5 lessons 33
Grade 10 30 +45% 13,5 lessons 33
Source: A kerettantervek alkalmazása, 2000
* School maintainers are required to finance the time frame defined by the percentage of mandatory lessons as a
compulsory task. This additional timeframe opens up the possibility to hold optional lessons, to organize groups,
to develop special talents per individual or group, and to compensate for the disadvantaged.
** According to Article 8. Para. (2) of the framework curriculum decree, the total number of a student’s
mandatory and optional lessons per week from grades 1-6 can only exceed the number of lessons listed in the
first column by 2; from grades 7-12 by 3. It is important to note that the timeframe for optional lessons may be
regrouped between the individual grades, classes and teaching weeks.
In international comparison, the total intended instruction time is quite low in

Hungary. The reason is that our 37-week school year is 1-3 weeks shorter than those of other
countries in the European Union, and we are put at a disadvantage by calculating 60 minute
lessons for those countries where the length of teaching lessons is longer than 45 minutes.
Comparing the number of mandatory lessons of the 3 grades of lower secondary education to
other countries (facts from 1998), we may conclude that in the 24 reviewed OECD countries
only 6 have fewer lesson numbers than Hungarian children (Education at a Glance, 2000).
In truth, however, Hungarian children are overburdened because they take part in more
classes than is required by law. Schools use part of the optional lesson schedule for mandatory
22
Kvt., 52 § paragraph (2)
37
lessons to cover the additional needs of advanced-level instruction, newly introduced subjects
and early foreign-language teaching. According to research results, the real mandatory lesson
numbers are generally 5-15% higher per year than those shown by statistics and prescribed by
law. To stop the unlawful growth in lesson numbers, the modification of the Public Education
Act in 1999 clearly rules that students can only participate in optional classes by request
(minors only with parental permission). In addition to that regulation, the ministerial decree
regarding the introduction of the framework curriculum sets an upper limit to the student
workload (see Table 6).
2.1.3 Teaching and learning strategies
2.1.3.1 The methodological culture of teachers
Teachers in Hungary have complete methodological freedom to achieve the educational goals
set forth by the pedagogical program.23 Most of them do not pledge themselves to one
method, but rather employ hybrid methodologies. According to representative surveys
amongst urban teachers, almost all use methods of explanation, discussion, and visualization,
as well as individualized work. Group work, debate, student and teacher presentations, and
especially at lower school levels, games are also popular. At the same time, hardly more than
half of urban teachers use multi-media aids (in villages the rate is likely to be significantly
smaller), and a quarter of them use other computer-related possibilities. A large proportion of
teachers have never even heard of the project method based on alternative pedagogy, which is
spreading slowly – its use is sparse (Falus, 2001).
According to classroom observations, teachers preferring traditional methods usually
employ the frontal class-work technique. Knowledge transfer is dominant during the lesson.
The teacher’s explanation is usually completed with the help of traditional or modern visual
aids. Teachers place increased significance on regular testing, an indispensable part of the
class is comprised, therefore, of verbal and/or written examination. Frontal class-work is often
criticized because of its verbosity, the lack of attention given to individual students, because
the interaction between student and teacher is very one-sided, and because it does not develop
students’ cooperation skills.
To improve educational effectiveness and as an affect of alternative pedagogy, small-
group activities have spread considerably. It is common to split the class into two groups
based on students’ knowledge of the subject in foreign languages, technology, and math, as
well as by gender in physical education. In these cases, two teachers work simultaneously
with the children, but in different classrooms. Hungarian teachers often use group work even
with whole classes. The aspects of grouping depend on the pedagogical goal: sometimes a
homogenous group is organized with similarly developed and motivated children, while at
other times the group is perfectly heterogeneous.
In some schools – primarily in foundational and private schools – teaching is
exclusively conducted in individual and cooperative group forms. Integrated subjects and
projects replace the rigid separation of subjects, and teaching material is developed within an
epochal framework. In Hungary, the Waldolf (Steiner) schools are the most widespread, but
methods, elements, and techniques of the Freinet, Gordon, Rogers and Montessori
pedagogical systems are also used in primary schools.
23
Kvt., 19 § paragraph (1)
38
2.1.3.2 The present state of the teaching-learning relationship
In Hungary there is little tradition of connecting teaching and learning processes. Lessons are
generally characterized by the use of the frontal method, i.e. students play the passive role of
receiver in the teacher’s activities (giving lectures, explaining material, demonstrating
experiments, etc.). At home after the lessons, or in the framework of the so-called daytime
learning organized in school, students “study” independently, i.e. they do their written
homework and study from textbooks, memorize assigned texts, formulas, etc. In Hungary
teachers assign homework almost every day in nearly every subject, beginning in first grade
with an amount that takes most students 1-3 hours to complete.
In addition to textbooks, schools make the parents purchase accompanying workbooks
and collections of exercises. Teachers usually assign homework from these sources. Less
commonly do we see independent studies, simple experiments, and assignments involving
longer observation or collective work. In general, students are usually not motivated by
homework assignments to work from sources outside the textbook. Methods requiring an
increase in student activity and creativity instead of reproducing the textbook material are
slowly gaining popularity in various school and non-school programs.
There are widely varying traditions governing the linking of teaching and learning
processes with the individual subjects. Student activities are continuous in the so-called
instructional subjects (e.g. drawing, singing) and in mathematics. In physics and chemistry
lessons practical experiments are performed, while biology is characterized by outside student
activities such as collective work. With the spread of communicative language instruction, the
use of pair work and materials from a wide range of sources has become widespread in
language learning. In most other subjects only the teacher is active, although experience has
shown that the teacher’s personality and methodological culture is a stronger determinant than
the nature of the subject.
This problem is less prevalent in teacher training, but it appears there, as well. As a
result of the enormous expansion of teacher training, the use of presentations suitable for a
larger number of students has gained popularity in teacher training institutions as opposed to
more active methods such as small-group seminars and exercises. A governmental decree24
stipulates that at least 40% of pedagogical training should be of a practical nature, yet
according to teacher training institutions the financial basis necessary for the implementation
of the decree is lacking. Practical experience in the processes of planning, organizing and
supplementing is missing from the beginning teacher’s theoretical and didactic education.
2.1.3.3 Means and methods for strengthening the teaching-learning relationship
In order to strengthen the learning-oriented nature of education, there is a strategic

significance to the central curriculum’s shift of emphasis from knowledge to be mediated to
skills that are to be developed. Previously mentioned new elements of the curricula –
developmental requirements in NAT, introductory forms of activity (see under “Central
Curricular Documents” in the previous section) – describe those cognitive and practical
activities through which learning takes place. The new curriculum deviates from the previous
Hungarian curricular traditions by allowing teachers to replace their programmed teaching
activities with the orientation of learning and personal development processes of students.
Authorities use the centralized regulation as a means to strengthen the openness of
schools, and to spread methods that expand students’ learning activities. One example of this
was when the decree regarding the introduction of the framework curricula stressed, that in
the interests of activating and motivating students, teaching activities can be planned in ways
24
111/1997. (VI. 27) Governmental decree, “Teacher Certification Requirements”
39
different from traditional methods, as long as they guarantee the completion of requirements.
Project methods, forest schools, museums, library activities, and other similar solutions are
mentioned.25
The spread and disbursement of practice patterns employing active methods play as
important a role as the changes in central regulation, in the approach and methodological
revision of the educational process. Alternative schools, which play a pioneer role in bringing
together teaching and learning processes, are usually open to the public, making local study of
their educational practices possible for interested teachers and trainee teachers. The most
significant alternative pedagogical system developed in Hungary, the so-called Value
Intermediary and Skills Development Pedagogy (ÉKP) is strongly activity-oriented: its
curriculum is used by nearly 100 schools. This program has an independent, national
development and in-service training center, funded by central support. The Pedagogical In-
service Training Methodology and Information Center (PETI), which was established in 1997
by the Ministry of Education and within which an Alternative In-service Training Directorate
is located, played an important part in the dissemination of active methods. There is also a
four-year, Waldorf teacher training graduate program in Hungary. In addition, future teachers
get to know the theory and methods of the more significant alternative pedagogies in
obligatory courses in all teacher-training institutions. They also have the opportunity to
receive additional experience about certain pedagogical systems in selected courses.
2.1.3.4 Help given to teachers in preparing and implementing curricula
During the 1990s, teachers received widely varied professional help (which will be discussed
in detail in the section entitled “Implementation Process”) to start using the new central
curricula. The support system established at the time was partly based on previous elements
(for example, the county pedagogical institutes and the professional advisory system existed
within it in the 1980s), and partly on completely new elements (for example, the previously
mentioned expert system was established after 1983, as well as the national curriculum data
base, which helped schools create their local curriculum).
In order to solve their professional problems, schools may ask external advisors – in
most cases in exchange for a fee - of the national pedagogical institutions of the providers of
professional services, the county, capital (district) pedagogical institutes, and also experts
from the non-profit and for-profit service providing organizations. They can also use the
names listed in the National Register of Experts. This register only accepts individuals with
an appropriate degree, 10 years of teaching experience and who are well-known experts in the
field.26 According to research findings of the NAT implementation review, 40% of primary
schools and 17% of high schools employed experts to implement the central curricula and to
create a local curriculum.
After the elaboration of the new curriculum regulations and the introduction of the
National Core Curriculum, teacher training colleges and universities began playing a more
active role in assisting teachers in creating and adopting curricula. Independent courses on
curriculum theory and curriculum preparation were offered in more institutions, with the goal
of developing curricular knowledge and the competence of the participants. In these courses,
the social-political and cultural aspects of the curriculum and curriculum types are analyzed,
the central (NAT and framework curriculum) and local documents of the two-tiered
regulation, the role of curricula in the school teaching-learning process, the local curricular
strategies, the tasks of school leadership and faculty in the development of local curricula are
all dealt with. Teacher-training institutions often organize in-service training programs for
25
Framework curriculum Decree 3. § paragraph (2)
26
Ktv., 101 § paragraph 3
40
teachers already in the field, where participants are introduced to the curricular selection and
practice the skills needed to analyze curricula, and make an analysis of their own school’s
pedagogical program and local curriculum in teams.
The guides written by the national developmental service providing institutions (OKI,
NSZI) (e.g. the NAT series) or brought to the schools by the Ministry of Education (e.g. The
Implementation of Framework Curriculum, 2000) also help teachers to create and adopt
curricula.
2.1.4 Evaluation policies and methods
Within the Hungarian public education system the establishment of national standards to track
student development and to evaluate achievements has only taken place partially. The main
direction of the development was not towards a system of student level evaluations, but of
institutional evaluations and self-evaluations.
2.1.4.1 Evaluation policy means
It was mentioned above, that in the 1990s the function of evaluations in the Hungarian public
education system was considerably upgraded, and that an extremely lavish system of
requisites was established in this field. The following requisites are worth increased attention.
Setting national standards. During the 1990s many kinds of standards were set at the
national level. The most important of these standards was the establishment of national
curriculum requirements in the form of the previously mentioned National Core Curriculum
and the framework curricula. These documents defined those requirements by age and grade
that schools and students shall achieve. They do not only stipulate the educational content, but
also the skills and competencies to be achieved by students. In 1998 national standards were
issued in regards to school-equipment, as well – the institutions must abide by these
requirements by 2003. Among the national standards it is necessary to mention examination
and certification requirements, which concern the basic knowledge exam requirements to be
met at the end of the 10th year, and the matriculation and vocational exam requirements to be
fulfilled at the end of the 12th year. In the case of vocational education, standards are defined
in the National Instruction Register. This document prescribes all instructional and
qualification requirements in every profession specified by the government.
Defining the evaluation and quality control tasks within the Public Education Act. The
Public Education Act describes in detail the supervision, evaluation, and quality control tasks:
it defines the content of and the tools adaptable for these activities. It also indicates the related
responsibilities of the individual stakeholders (Article 107). The law defines such
responsibilities and tasks for the minister, certain national organizations, local governments
maintaining schools and for the institutions themselves. It separately defines the concepts of
evaluation and quality control: whereas the former means the occasional examination of
meeting pre-set standards, the latter refers to continuous institutional-level activities, which
systematically guarantee “the harmony of professional goals and institutional operations, in
order to meet the requirements of students, teachers, parents, maintainers and the labor
market.” This obviously presupposes recognition of the listed parties’ demands and – in cases
of deviation from the standards – permits local variances. The law further stipulates (99§) that
evaluation activities shall be developed, national and regional level measurements shall be
carried out and that pedagogical service providing institutions can be entrusted with these
tasks.
Quality control over textbooks and programs used by schools. Due to the
decentralized provisions of content regulation, schools may now use many different kinds of
local curricular programs and textbooks. Quality control, therefore, is now receiving increased
41
attention. After the completion of an expert opinion through OKNT, textbooks are included in
the national textbook register (schools may apply for state support exclusively for books from
this register). Schools are provided with model programs developed and evaluated at the
national level. These can be adapted to the individual schools needs. School maintainers may
adopt the pedagogical program of their schools only after an external, expert evaluation is
performed. A system is being developed in which the programs developed or adopted by the
schools shall be accredited at the national level – similarly under the control of the National
Council for Public Education.
System of public education experts. The role of the system of educational inspection,
in the mid-1980’s was partly taken over by the so-called expert system established in the mid-
1990s. The Public Education Act (107§) stipulates that only those experts included in the
national register for experts may take part in expert supervision. These experts are accredited
on the national level after a selection procedure. Legal norms regulate their selection and
training, while their local and institutional evaluating activities are completed on a civil law
contractual basis. At the end of 1999 there were 4878 public education experts in Hungary.
Measurement of student achievement levels. In Hungary, sampled measurement of
student achievement levels takes place regularly. During the 1990s reading and math levels
were tested four times within the framework of the so-called Monitor assessment, which
makes it possible to analyze subject achievement over a given time. These tests generally take
samples from 150 schools with several thousand students participating. The country takes part
in other, similar sampling procedures by applying international tests (e.g. IEA TIMSS,
OECD, PISA), which makes it possible to draw international comparisons, as well. Sampling
measurements of basic achievements are conducted within the framework of various
educational scientific researches as well. Likewise, in most cases, many county pedagogical
service institutes administer such tests upon the request of schools or school maintainers.
Finally – on school maintainer commission – private consulting firms also complete such
measurements.
The development and dissemination of evaluation and quality control means. Central
authorities make various efforts in order to provide schools and school maintainers with
appropriate evaluation and quality control methods. The most important effort of such kind is
the Comenius 2000 quality control program, launched in 1999, which attempts to adapt a
framework of quality control techniques (e.g. TQM) from the economic world for academic
and local use. Within this program’s framework, state support is given to schools to build
their own internal quality control system with the help of quality control experts.
Standard setting, evaluation, and quality control in teacher training and in-service
teacher training. Teacher training requirements are dealt with in detail by a governmental
decree, which – for example – specifies how big a part of the instruction shall be devoted to
the development of practical professional skills. A uniquely complex quality control system
was set up in in-service training, after it had been made possible for schools to make free use
of state support for these purposes, and for anyone to offer training programs on the education
market. A governmental decree set forth the criteria in-service training programs are required
to meet, and a national body was entrusted with accrediting – with the help of specially
trained experts – the proposed training programs and institutions offering them. It is
worthwhile to mention the national standards connected with the instruction of school
principals. Because the progression of teachers and school principals is connected with
participation in in-service training, these standards can have a relatively strong effect at the
institutional level.
The National Center for Evaluation and Testing. Following the 1999 amendment in
the Public Education Act, the Ministry of Education established a national organization, the
National Center for Public Education Evaluation and Testing, which also has regional units.
42
This organization’s task is the national coordination of evaluation activities and secondary
school testing.
Public Education Ombudsman. The 1999 modifications also established within the
Ministry of Education the institution of the public education ombudsman, whose task is to
examine violations within the public education system. Although the ombudsman primarily
investigates violations of the civil rights of school users, attention is also paid to violations of
the legally defined standards aimed at guaranteeing quality service.
Defining the duties of local governments and schools in connection with evaluations.
The Public Education Act enumerates the evaluation of the school’s pedagogical work among
the tasks of local governments maintaining schools. At the same time the act defines the tools
which local governments may employ for the completion of this duty. In regards to the
institutional level, the Public Education Act stipulates that every school shall adopt a strategic
document, the so-called pedagogical program, the content of which is likewise regulated by
law. A school’s pedagogical program must contain “a system of monitoring, evaluation, and
quality control of the educational work conducted in the institution.” The aforementioned
Comenius 2000 program provides assistance to institutions for the completion of this task.
Other tools. Besides those previously mentioned, there are many other kinds of tools
contributing to the success of evaluation functions. For years now, for instance, high schools
have made information public concerning the percentage of their graduating students applying
to institutions of higher education and the percentage of these students who are accepted.
Recently, collecting information about students’ social-cultural backgrounds, making the so-
called „added value” analysis possible, has complemented this information. It is worthwhile
to mention that there are pedagogical institutes run by self-governments in twenty counties:
most of them employ experts performing pedagogical evaluations and also conducting student
achievement testing. A specialized university training program guarantees the supply of
experts. Finally, we must mention the numerous great and small private firms established in
the 1990s primarily conducting local or institutional evaluations upon the commission of
school maintainers.
2.1.4.2 The development of methods and institutional systems for unified standards
An important priority in the planning of documents for the regulation of content in public
education from the mid-1990s, was given to the development of a coherent evaluation system
based on the curricula, the rules of the basic knowledge exam and the matriculation exam.
The National Core Curriculum defined minimum criteria for the advancement of students in
certain matters. The framework curricula however, define the minimum conditions that can be
demanded for advancement per grade, as they hope to direct the process of education,
including student evaluation, in a more direct manner.
The subject requirements set forth in the central curricula offer a strong enough basis
for the development of local evaluation systems on the behalf of schools. Furthermore, they
can serve as a foundation for the development of task banks, which schools may use for
diagnostic purposes and which educational leaders on various levels can utilize for the
examination of the quality of teaching and learning. The requirements for interdisciplinary-
subject areas are, however, not worked out in detail.
In Hungary every student has the right to take a so-called basic knowledge exam based
on unified requirements after the 10th grade.27 The basic knowledge exam, as mentioned
above, is a new examination form in the Hungarian education system, which will consist of 3
mandatory subjects (mother tongue, mathematics, history and social studies) and 3 chosen
subjects (including integrated subjects). The standardization work for the basic knowledge
27
24/1997. (VI.15.) Decree of the Ministry of Culture and Education on the rules for the basic knowledge exam.
43
exam is being undertaken by the Kiss Árpád National Public Education Service Institution’s
(KÁOKSZI) Basic Knowledge Exam Center. The Institution was established in 2000. To date
8 equivalent task papers for 11 subjects had been prepared and measured. The demand of
schools for standardized measurement tools is reflected in the fact that a great number of
schools volunteered for the pilot measurements.
The matriculation exam system, which has a long history, is also to undergo reform.
The matriculation exam is to become unified (i.e., the same for high schools and vocational
secondary schools), bi-level (available at the middle or advanced level per subject, with the
latter to be accepted as entrance criteria for institutions of higher education), and standardized
(containing centrally drafted tasks).28 From no sooner than 2005 the new format matriculation
exam will consist of four mandatory subjects (Hungarian language and literature, history,
mathematics, foreign language) and one freely chosen subject. The construction and
development of models related to the content and evaluation of matriculation exam
performance is also conducted in the Evaluation and Matriculation Exam Center of the
KÁOKSZI.
The development of performance standards in Hungary is influenced by measurements
taken in the framework of the IEA research programs. International cooperation has not only
led to the adaptation of the culture of measurement, but has effected the development of the
philosophy of measurement as well. In this regard, a serious change in orientation took place
at the end of the 1990s. Whilst earlier standardized test studies were seen as providing
information on the degree to which students acquired knowledge from the curriculum in given
subjects, new studies tend to be oriented towards examining general competencies. That is to
say, subject-by-subject knowledge is now secondary to so-called instrumental knowledge in
terms of emphasis.
2.1.4.3 Evaluating student performance: legal regulations and practice
Teachers evaluate student performance during the school year regularly, assigning grades at
the end of the semester and at the end of the school year. The subject-specific teachers give
these grades based on the grades obtained throughout the year. After consulting the other
relevant teachers, the evaluation and grading of students’ behavior and diligence is done by
the tutor.29 The students and their parents have to be informed regularly of the grades and the
final grades of the semester and of the year. The grades are the following:30
• Knowledge evaluation: excellent (5), good (4), average (3), satisfactory (2),
unsatisfactory (1)
• Behavior evaluation: exemplary (5), good (4), variable (3), bad (2)
• Diligence evaluation: exemplary (5), good (4), variable (3), negligent (2)
A school’s pedagogical program may prescribe the use of different grades (e.g. using
words instead of numbers) to qualify and evaluate students’ performance, diligence, and
behavior instead of grades given during the year and – in years 1-6 – instead of the final
grades at the end of the semester and the year.31 The more differentiated textual evaluations
have spread following the pattern of alternative and foundational programs and private
schools.
The local “lay” evaluation by the teacher has come under considerable criticism due to the
fact that according to research findings, differences between the performance of students
28
24/1997. (VI.15.) Government Decree on the rules for the matriculation exam.
29
For each given group of students the school principal assigns a teacher who stays with them for several years –
usually four.
30
31
44
measured by standard methods and the performance “estimated” by the teacher are not
allowable. Evaluation experts express the deficiencies of the work sheet design and data
processing, as well as the undifferentiated handling of learning failures (the lack of
weighting), and educational researchers criticize the relativity and subjectivity of grading.
Students receive a certificate about their performance in individual years and test (basic
knowledge exam, matriculation and vocational exam) requirements, which must be written in
Hungarian, or if the education is held partly or completely in the language of a national and
ethnical minority or in another language, in both languages, i.e. in Hungarian and in the
language of the national or ethnic minority, or the other language.32
2.1.4.4 Methods of assisting students who fail to meet the standards
The situation of those students who fail to meet the standards, called “fall-behinds”
(leszakadók) in Hungarian terminology, is one of the main problems in Hungarian public
education. Traditionally within this group, the education of students requiring special
education (handicapped children) received increased attention. Nowadays, however, those
students who have gotten into a disadvantaged situation, not because they are handicapped,
but because of social and cultural reasons, have been receiving more and more attention.
The education of the handicapped is supported by a considerably widespread structure
in Hungary. The most important element of this structure is the special institution system,
which accepts handicapped students (see the table in the annex on the data of special needs
education institutions), and the definition of specific, governing principles that are used in
special needs education (national guidelines for the education of the handicapped were
published in 1997). In addition, individuals requiring special treatment are also supported by a
number of services within the normal institutional system (e.g. educational consulting, speech
therapy).
The other group of students who fail to meet the standards is comprised of individuals
with social and cultural reasons behind their low performance. Amongst the underachievers in
Hungary are the Roma, who constitute the biggest ethnic minority in Hungary and who are
significantly over-represented. The high rate of “fall-behind” Roma students is especially
troubling because – due to their deficient, or low, education – their parents belong to the
largest group of the continuously unemployed.
To improve the educational provisions of those who failed to meet the standards, more
central measures were enacted in the second half of the 1990s, and a comprehensive system of
assistance was established to help these students.
2.1.4.2.1 Changes in the rate of individual progress
Besides the traditional, compulsory form of slowing down a student’s progress, i.e. repeating
a grade, the 1999 amendment of the Public Education Act introduced more possibilities to
slow down children who fail to meet the standards. A new approach is to simultaneously
exempt a student from evaluation and qualification for a shorter or longer period of time, and
to adopt an intensive development program, while providing for the further progression of the
student. This approach applies primarily to those points of the public education system (e.g. at
the period of entering the school system and going from primary to secondary school) where
the dangers of failure are greater.
The dropout rate in Hungarian education is not high compared to international rates.
The rate of children who attend schools for special needs education, however, is high (for
several years now, this has been about 3.5%). Most of these students enter directly from
32
45
kindergarten, but quite often from the first grade or from other lower grades. For these reasons
the educational policy-makers try to improve the tolerance in primary schools and – especially
during the beginning years of education – to expand the support system for children who fall
below the standards, in addition to reviewing the selection procedures of committees
responsible for decisions on transfers to special needs education and making such provisions
more strict.
According to experts, the programs and methods that are supposed to facilitate the
transition from kindergarten to primary school are not common enough in Hungary. For some
of the children arriving from play-centered kindergartens, the school requirements turn out to
be too high, and to compensate for this, it has become more popular to enroll students at age 7
instead of 6 (the compulsory age). Legal regulation makes this possible in certain cases.
About 20% of first grade students make use of this flexible enrollment to start their studies at
age seven. The 1999 legal amendment made it possible to stay – upon expert recommendation
– in nursery school even longer than the previously assured age of seven.
The preparatory year in primary school and the permission of individual progression
may help students who are retarded, minimally handicapped, or behaviorally disturbed.
The preparatory year is a combination of the decelerating procedure and the student’s
exemption from evaluation and qualification. During the preparatory year,33 students are
prepared for the completion of school requirements within the framework of playing. This
form used to exist in previous education as a subsequent decision to qualify unsatisfactory
students into a preparatory grade, which helped prevent students from beginning their
academic career with a failing, unsatisfactory report-card. This possibility still exists. A new
element is, however, that upon the suggestion of the educational advisory institute the
relegation of a student into a preparatory year may be executed during the year. The student
remains in his/her own class, but does not work towards the completion of primary grade
requirements, but rather prepares for academic life and socialization with the help of a
personal development program created by the teacher. This format makes it easier for the
student to fulfill the primary grade requirements during the following school year.
If the personal skills and level of development of a student accepted to first grade
makes it necessary, the school principal is not only able to exempt him/her from evaluation
and qualification for one year but – based on the opinion of a circle of experts defined in the
legal provisions – can also allow for so-called individual progression that conforms to the
student’s personal circumstances and level of development. The permit must specify the
subject and last teaching day of the year by which the student must catch up with his
classmates. This individual progression34 – either in all or in individual subjects – can last for
varying lengths of time, but in most cases until the end of the fourth grade. This format
primarily assists those children with partial disabilities (e.g. dyslexia), who, in the absence of
these possibilities, would be compelled to repeat a grade, possibly even if he/she completes
the requirements in most subjects exceptionally well. As opposed to previous practice, the
legal modifications of 1999 made it possible for schools to guarantee the opportunity to catch
up, not only for handicapped students, but also for students who are completely capable (as
determined by competent bodies), yet exempt from evaluation and qualification due to
socialization or behavioral problems, or learning difficulties, with the help of individual work
provided on the basis of a special development plan.35
Another new provision is that if a student of compulsory education age repeats the
same grade the second, or multiple time because of not completing educational requirements,
the school must make it possible for the student to participate in individual work of the given
33
34
Ktv., 70.§ paragraph (7) and (9)
35
46
subject or subjects.36 Naturally, participation is not compulsory, but the student must be
informed in writing of the possibility and also must be persuaded (along with his/her parents)
in a personal meeting to accept the school’s offer. If the school believes that the parents’
attitude threatens the development of their child, it is the school’s responsibility to make use
of the assistance of the children’s welfare service.
Special attention is required for 3-3.5 % of students who do not complete the 8-grade
primary school and enter the labor market without any school degree. The legal amendment
tries to remedy their situation by making it possible for a student to participate in a 1-2 year
remedial education37 program at a vocational training school if he/she does not finish 8-grade
primary school by the age of 16. The goal of remedial education is to transfer knowledge that
helps students begin their studies successfully in vocational education. A student who
participates in remedial education must be counted as two students in enrollment figures. The
legal regulation also makes it possible for these older students to gain admission into middle
education without a primary school degree and to receive a lower level vocational
qualification. Theoretically, the regulation even makes it possible for those students who have
only completed a minimal number (2-3) of grades, to use this opportunity.
2.1.4.2.2 Curricular programs for students who fail to meet the standards
The secondary educational institution type, which accepts the largest share of students who
fail to meet the standards, is the vocational training school. The framework curriculum of the
vocational training school has two types of lesson structures (see the charts entitled The
subject system and the hours of instruction of the framework curriculum adopted in 2000 for
grades 9-12 of vocational training schools under Annex 2). The so-called “developing” (“A”)
version has the goal of developing functional abilities necessary to enter vocational education.
This curriculum version differs partly from the other (“B”) in that it has a higher number of
lessons in career orientation and professional preparation, and its structure is developed for
natural science education. A significant change is that breaking with the traditions of the
academic-oriented Hungarian natural science education, the vocational training school
curriculum version created for those who fall below the standards, lists the teaching of natural
and health education as a practical, integrated subject. Both forms of education are established
for students who have successfully completed primary school. With the student composition
of the given grade in mind, schools choose which lesson structure, “A” or “B”, is suitable for
the individual student groups.
The curriculum also assures that students who progress more slowly through the
vocational education grades can also prepare to pass the basic knowledge exam38 that the
others pass upon completion of the general education at the end of the 10th grade.
2.1.4.2.3 Financing tools
Some of the additional per capita quotas that are set in the annual budget bill help create
financial stipulations for the special activities of the “fall-behind” students. Some examples
are the special normative support for students who have severe socialization, learning, or
behavioral problems, those who participate in vocational training school remedial education,
and those who participate in the Roma remedial education. The financing of development
36
37
38
Every secondary school student continuing his/her studies has the right to take the primary school core studies
final examination, but this is only mandatory for those studying a profession, which requires such an
examination.
47
programs required by law is obligatory for school maintainers. Additionally, schools have the
regular opportunity to receive funds through the tenders of national public foundations,
county and local foundations, as well as private foundations for the development of students
below the standards. Therefore, failure in remedying students only has financial reasons in
certain places or for shorter periods of time.
Several programs were organized with significant financing tools to exclusively help
Roma students. Some examples are the Gypsy Educational Development Program launched in
1995, and the PHARE program launched in 2000 to help the socialization of Roma youths.
The latter program has a total budget of 9.6 million Euros and 2 out of 3 main projects are
directly related to education.
2.1.4.3.4 Pedagogical tools
According to research and expert opinions, the reasons for the failure of remedial programs
are mainly the monotony of the methodological culture of teachers and the forcing of
traditional methods that regularly prove to be inadequate for students who need special
education. The most widespread form of class-work organization in Hungary created with the
average student in mind, is the frontal class-work method. An unavoidable result of this type
of class-work is that some children who have weaker abilities or less motivation “slide off the
rails” which means that they are unable to follow the teacher’s explanation tailored to the
capacity of the average student, and thus they fall below the standards. Although in this
consideration there have been positive changes, especially in the school entry period, we still
cannot say that differentiated education has been established in Hungarian schools. The
previously mentioned, so-called “alternative schools,” and the generally innovative schools
are at the forefront of working out and spreading special educational programs and new
methods. The teachers themselves also sense their lack of competence in this field, and many
of them choose in-service training programs where development of pedagogical skills take
place, and where they are prepared for the special handling of “fall-behind” students (ones
who fall below the standards) and also have the opportunity to look at already successful
programs and projects. This is enhanced by the spread of self-knowledge training, as well as
courses serving the development of teachers’ personalities and professional socialization,
which contribute to the development of the future teachers’ self-reflectivity. In the institutions
of higher education, education of the so-called “developing teachers” is taking place, whose
special task is the intensive handling of students who fall below the standards.
If the system of methods (the financing of support, the flexibility of content regulation
and the evaluation system, as well as stressing the topic in teacher training and in-service
training, and the wide supply of textbooks and materials acknowledging differences between
students) that is needed to spread the differentiated educational practices is taken into account,
we may conclude that almost all of these elements – most of which, are not on a low level –
are to be found in Hungary. At the same time, however, these elements do not easily come
together into a unified whole, and despite the teachers’ increasingly modern didactic
knowledge, most of them still use traditional methods imprinted in their own school
socialization.
2.2. The changes and expansion of the content of education
The changes concerning the content of education in Hungary have resulted from the complex
interconnection of several factors in the past decade. The intensive content-improvement was
backed by governmental initiatives manifested – as described above – in the form of the
adoption of legal norms, governmental documents and regulations, such as the National Core
48
Curriculum, the framework curricula, the content-documents regulating special fields, the
establishment of a regulated textbook market, the determination of new standards for tests and
the matriculation exam, the establishment of new systems concerning in-service training and
quality assurance, etc.
Additionally, very strong local and school-level activity unfolded, resulting in a
number of alternative programs, pedagogical approaches and unique local solutions. In the
course of the trying process of transformation, intensive communication took place between
the central decision-makers and the institutions that have become autonomous. The exchange
of information and mutual learning was unprecedented. The development of public education
was unfolding in the framework of conflicts related to a search of equilibrium between central
factors (regulating-governing components) and local elements.
One of the definitive characteristics of the Hungarian content reform is that the
process (that was not without conflicts) unfolded in a densely populated arena with many
stakeholders: governmental organizations and professional NGOs, educational experts,
stakeholders trying to adapt innovative achievements of foreign countries and mainly the
schools themselves were experimenting with content development. While the decentralization
generated exceptional innovative impetus and energies, it made it possible for particular local
interests and results of professionally doubtful value to appear on the scene. Another
important characteristic of the changes is that they were initiated in a period when the country
was facing enormous economic difficulties, and consequently, the financial possibilities of
public education deteriorated in a dramatic manner. At the same time – even under these
circumstances and especially in the second half of the 1990’s – significant resources could be
mobilized for the direct content development of education. The distribution of these sources
was regulated by new mechanisms, which provided the different workshops of content
development with access to the sources.
2.2.1. The motives of the development of the content of education
In Hungary – like in other countries – the motives of educational content development are
complex. Besides the characteristically Hungarian motives, we need to point out those,
which are characteristic of the whole Central and Eastern European region, including the
countries of the former Soviet block, and those motives which are manifested at the global
level. These three – national, regional and global – groups of motives may be distinguished
but they are also closely interconnected.
The characteristically Hungarian features (e.g. the high degree of decentralization in
public administration, the fundamental transformation of the professional structure of
economy, the effort to overcome linguistic isolation, the local behavior of citizens and the
reinforcement of moral factors serving as its basis, the improvement of the legal, political and
public culture of the society and the development of attitudes related to a market economy)
are often hard to separate from the processes characteristic of the whole Central and Eastern
European region (e.g. the transformation of the entire political and economic structure after
the collapse of the Soviet system, or the social and economic tensions stemming therefrom,
steps involving the creation of a market economy, the establishment of the rule of law, steps
aiming at the harmonization with the European integration process and the efforts to catch
up). At the same time, the global processes concerning society, economy and technology have
had a deep impact in this region as well (e.g. the growing importance of information and
communication technology, the increasing number of environmental and health related
problems and the integration processes stemming from the reinforcement of supranational
economic networks).
49
2.2.1.1. The characteristically Hungarian motives of transformation
The first uniquely Hungarian motive of transformation to be mentioned, is the regulative

pressure that evolved in the early 1990’s between the decentralization of public
administration and the democratization of society on the one hand, and the earlier system of
educational content regulation on the other. The content regulation in education had been
characterized, until recently, by a one-tier system, the total control of processes and the
weakness of output control from the initialization of mass education. Educational objectives,
requirements, materials and as a part of these, the timeframe of subjects and topics were very
stable and extremely rigid – they were to be upheld in every single Hungarian school. The
content of education was renewed in every 10-20 years by means of central curricula issued
by the competent ministry. Between the cycles only weak curriculum development work was
conducted both in the central pedagogical institute responsible for development and in the
educational institutions. The last curriculum – born under the aegis of the above curriculum
policy – was issued in 1978. Similar to its predecessors, it regulated the content of work
conducted in public educational institutions in an extensive, detailed and inflexible manner. It
determined the subjects and the number of hours of instruction for each grade. Only smaller
adjustments of this curriculum were carried out during the 1980’s.
After the political transition of 1989, i.e. the fall of state socialism, the over-regulation
of the educational subsystem proved to be incompatible with the development of the
democratic social structure and the market economy. Referring to examples of more
developed Western European countries, – some of which introduced national core curricula in
the late 1980’s and early 1990’s – most curricular experts and researchers of education urged
the replacement of the system of strict central governance and the detailed regulations
determining all elements of the educational process, with the reinforcement of output
regulation realized through a system of examination and the introduction of a framework-type
curricular regulation.
The central curriculum formally in effect until 1993 was heavily criticized by
stakeholders as well: partly due to the outdated educational content – which was not adjusted
to the changing requirements of the labor market – and the exaggerated emphasis on
knowledge, and partly because its regulative character restricted the professional autonomy of
schools and teachers guaranteed by a statute since 1985. Indeed, the impacts of political
transition could be felt in the Hungarian public education system (just like in the Hungarian
society and economy) somewhat sooner than in other countries of the former Soviet block.
The first blow to the traditionally uniform Hungarian system, which regulated the entire
educational process through the central curriculum and inspection system, was the abolition of
the system of specified inspection and the statutory articulation of the autonomy of schools in
the mid-1980’s. After the passing of the 1985 act on education more and more schools were
provided with the chance to diverge from the strict rules, to establish new school structures
and to experiment with new subjects, methods and educational content. An ever-growing
number of educational institutions were – under the pretense of “pedagogical experiments” or
“alternative pedagogical programs” – exempted from the obligation to abide by the subject
system and the hours of instruction defined by the 1978 central curriculum, and – by
abolishing the system of inspection – the different governments practically gave up on
directly monitoring the implementation of the central curriculum and sanctioning deviations
therefrom, thus the regulative power of the central curriculum kept continuously decreasing
from the late 1980’s on.
The weakening of direct political influence was indicated by the fact that the Minister
of Education abolished compulsory Russian language instruction before the first free
50
parliamentary elections of 1990, and the parliament put an end to the ideological restrictions
of education. Within their own scope of authority, schools altered the curricula of the most
politically influenced subjects (history, literature) and selected new textbooks for these
subjects from the evolving textbook market. Following the political transition, the concept of
central governance was further weakened by the abolition of the state monopoly of founding
schools, the transfer of the ownership of state schools to local self-governments and the
division of responsibility for management; i.e. the delegation of most decisions to the local
level. The statutory declaration of the free choice of school turned (at least in bigger
settlements) students and parents from forced consumers into stakeholders freely choosing
from the educational services on offer. This greatly increased the importance of the local
level, which was practically powerless in the centralized system.
The high degree of municipal and school autonomy and the evolving curricular
diversity made it impossible to return to the traditional curricular regulation model. However,
the conditions of the new model were only slowly evolving. The Public Education Act of
199339 reinforced the principle of shared responsibility and local autonomy, and replaced the
former central content regulation with a two-tier curricular regulation guaranteeing local
curricular independence. The early 1990’s were characterized by heated curricular debates:
several versions of the framework-type curriculum were made subject to public and
professional debate, yet due to the difficulties of arriving at a professional and political
consensus, the introduction of the National Core Curriculum40 – the central document of the
two-tiered curricular regulation harmonized with the requirements of a decentralized
educational system – and the preparation of local curricular documents, therefore the
pedagogical programs, were protracted.
Owing to the protraction of the curricular reform, for many years the school system
was operating without compulsory central curricular documents and written local curricula
that could have made the work of schools more comprehensible. At the same time, due to the
innovative flood of the early 1990’s, the differences between individual schools increased
radically, the permeability between the institutions decreased, the quality of education and the
requirements set for students became more heterogeneous. Aside from the preparation and
introduction of the National Core Curriculum and the introduction of the framework curricula
– the new documents of central regulation – also aimed at stabilizing this situation.
Other characteristic Hungarian features are the relatively high levels of professional
self-organization and activity of teachers and the existence of a professional layer promoting
and capable of realizing certain reforms and innovations. These active professional circles did
not only play an important role in initiating local innovations: they also had an impact on the
processes on the national level. The professional concept of the National Core Curriculum, for
instance, may be attributed to well-definable groups of educational experts (specializing in
curricular and assessment issues), who were also actively participating in international
correspondence.
Several factors – attributable to the changes of the economic, political and social
environment – also have an impact on government policies and local reforms. For instance, a
new professional structure and new educational content appeared, due to the development of
the market economy and the changes of the economic reform accompanying it. The content
developments responding to the new professional structure took place in institutions and
workshops of professional education (in accordance with the National Instruction Register)
parallel to the economic reforms. During the – sometimes dramatically rapid – structural
transformation of production and professions resulting from the evolution of market economy,
unemployment became an oscillating, but always present social phenomenon. The preparation
39
Act LXXIX on Public Education (hereinafter referred to as PEA)
40
Government Decree 130/1995 (X. 26.) on the Publication of the National Core Curriculum
51
of young people for the personal decisions of career orientation and development of necessary
knowledge and skills has become an important challenge for education. In this new multi-
faceted society, a far greater emphasis is placed on being informed concerning legal,
economic and financial questions, and on the role education may play in this field. Thus,
economic and legal knowledge and those methods through which the student may be provided
with the skills necessary for actively participating in public life and getting along in everyday
situations attracted increasing attention within the field of curriculum and teaching equipment
development. The innovations of conflict-pedagogy workshops connected to content
developments of the 1990’s were, for example, included for this reason in content documents
of the subject entitled “social sciences” and the subject concerning the form master’s lesson
entitled “class meeting”. The role of the media influencing the public opinion and the habits
of consumers also became increasingly important. The diversity of mass information, the
everyday programs offered by commercial television channels and radio stations, the rapid
expansion of cable channels and the effective operation of the worldwide web caught most
citizens unprepared, who are often dependent and not quite rational, in regards to their habits
of media-consumption. The realization of this fact influenced the content development of the
subject entitled ”media knowledge”, which aims at the development of critical decisions
concerning media-consumption and the students’ way of thinking.
Another important challenge facing education in the 1990’s, was the rapidly increasing
differentiation of the Hungarian society and the growing gap between the social, economic
and cultural opportunities of the different segments of society (e.g. minorities). Thus,
opportunity assurance through educational means became one of the definitive elements of
the development of educational content by the end of the decade. Special emphasis is placed
on the education of the Roma, the most numerous minority of Hungary, in order to enhance
their successful social integration and the improvement of the quality of their lives. The
developers of Roma educational programs use those multicultural educational achievements
and methods, which were developed in countries successful in the education of national
and/or ethnic minorities. The children of different national minority communities (German,
Romanian, Slovenian, Serb, etc.) may study in schools where the instruction is conducted in
their native language, and the content development of education is extended to multicultural
fields, primarily to ethnography and the preservation and development of national/ethnic
traditions.
It may partly be attributed to the special Hungarian conditions that the number of
students who become underachievers for individual or social reasons, or who face situations
of failure in school due to the lack of inspiration, increased significantly in the institutions of
public education. It became necessary to develop special remedial-inspirational materials and
educational methods for dropouts and students falling behind. Several content-related and
methodological developments are aimed at enhancing the chances of marginalized children to
be integrated into society and improving the quality of their lives. A group with special
development needs is constituted by students with learning disorders, whose curriculum is
developed in a manner, which takes their detrimental condition into full consideration. The
most promising direction of development is the elaboration of curricula and teaching
equipment adequate for educating special needs students together with ordinary children in
integrative, so-called receptive classes. Another very important mission (and a field of
content-related/methodological development) is the education of exceptionally talented
students (e.g. the Arany János Talent Development Program established in 1999 by the
Ministry of Education, which provides talented students of small settlements with an
opportunity to continue their studies).
A significant proportion of the Hungarian adult population proved to be unable to keep
up with the accelerating social and economic changes following the transition. Adult
52
employees who have lost their jobs due to the shortcomings of their level of education
constitute the target group of retraining, which is indispensable from the point of view of
unemployment stemming from the transformation of the economic structure. Hungarian
school-based adult education offers a chance for the more successful social, economic and
cultural rehabilitation of individuals (and social groups), who have been marginalized, whose
career-correction had to be diverted in the direction of training/retraining and who are often
functionally illiterate.
2.2.1.2. Regional and global impacts influencing Hungary
The change and development of Hungarian public educational content was influenced by
several processes which characterized the entire Central and Eastern European region in the
1990’s. Privatization, the establishment of a market economy, the development of the
institutional system of parliamentary democracy and the accession to the international
processes of integration appeared in all the countries of the region in more or less similar
ways. The countries of the region had lived in an economic, social, political and partly
cultural isolation for decades, which left its mark on the content and methods of education as
well. The end of this isolation brought along a dramatic explosion of the need for the content-
related modernization of education.
The processes of economic and political integration taking place on the European
continent meant an important challenge for the educational systems of the Central and Eastern
European countries that had freshly regained their independence. This does not imply the
renunciation of the national public educational policy, however a greater emphasis was laid
upon the political, legal, ethical, linguistic, social and economic elements of knowledge
related to Europe and the accession to the European Union. The reinforcement of the
European dimension is a significant element in the content development of Hungarian
education. In Hungarian institutions joining the international school-networks, a series of
innovations concerning curriculum-development has been launched. The activities of
institutions (schools seeking international cooperation) in the course of their pedagogical
innovations were facilitated by the European Union’s support provided within the framework
of the Socrates program.
According to different analyses, the Hungarian population’s competence in regards to
foreign languages is way behind that of other European countries, although the active
participation in the world economy would require effective communication skills in other
languages. Consequently, more effective language instruction also became one of the key
priorities of the development of educational content and teaching materials. After the
abolition of compulsory Russian education, particularly strong social pressure was articulated
in regards to the development of the teaching of modern Western languages, which required
provisions of a wider conditional framework of education (hours of instruction, teaching
materials, competencies, quality development, etc.).
Another global challenge (which is beyond the regional level) is set by the evolving
information society. This requires the education of people who are able to competently handle
the new information and communication technologies and utilize the information accessible
through the worldwide web. The content-related changes of the Hungarian educational system
are in accordance with this transformation: the vehicles of knowledge in the teaching-learning
process, the learning process itself, the role of teachers, the teacher-student relationship and
the direct connection between the school and its environment are thus changing accordingly.
The software and hardware development of schools – including providing for access to the
Internet – has been conducted in the framework of significant government programs
(SULINET, IRISZ).
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The global effects require the elaboration and dissemination of the pedagogy of
sustainability. The content-related and methodological development of environmental
education received significant support from the 1992 Environment and Development World
Meeting organized by the United Nations in Rio de Janeiro and the documents adopted there.
As a country participating in the Rio process, Hungary contributes to the sustainability of
mankind and the environment by assuming international obligations in the framework of
which it makes efforts to improve its environmental education. One of the engines of this
process is the civil movement of environmentalists, due to which a number of teachers’
organizations engaged in environmental education from the late 1980’s took an active role in
the development of educational content. Since the early 1990’s the ministries responsible for
environmental protection have provided continuous support for the content-related
innovations of environmental education. The document entitled National Strategy of
Environmental Education (National Strategy…, 1998), which gave an overview of the
situation of environmental education and pointed out the tasks related to development, was
published in 1998.
Another particular field of global challenges is health education and mental hygiene.
Upon the initiative of the European Committee of WHO, a series of national environmental-
health action-programs were created in the early 1980’s. Hungary also joined this process.
Acknowledging the severely unfavorable health conditions of the Hungarian population and
its low life expectancy (compared to the European average), in 1996 the Parliament adopted
the National Action Program for Environmental-Health in the framework of the National
Program for Environmental Protection. This document outlining a development process
scheduled for six years deals with the development of environmental-health education in a
separate chapter (National Action Program…, 2000). The Mental Hygiene Program, which
has been operating since the early 1990’s, has provided significant support for different
innovations in the field of mental-hygiene education. The results of this are realized through
the cooperation of creative teachers, state officials working in this field, experts in treating
addictions, psychiatrists, psychologists – primarily school psychologists – and physicians.
2.2.2. Entities participating in content development
Content development in Hungary in the 1990’s was characterized by the diversity of entities
actively participating in the process. The content-related reforms unfolded in an arena
involving a number of factors, the following enumerated below:
• Governmental educational policy and governmental development institutions;
• Experts importing foreign initiatives, participants of international cooperation, Hungarian
institutions mediating educational information coming from abroad;
• Central and regional development funds and programs;
• Innovative and competitive educational institutions, teachers, alternative schools and
pedagogical workshops;
• Professional organizations of teachers and other societal organizations;
• Providers of professional services;
• Producers of textbooks and educational equipment;
• Higher education and research;
• Parents and other stakeholders;
• Innovative teachers.
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2.2.2.1. State organs and national institutions
The state decisions on educational policy, the acts of governmental organs and the work of the
national development institutions supervised by them had a significant impact on the content-
related development of education and the changes of educational regulation.
As we saw above, after the political transition a complete change of paradigms took
place in respect to the development and regulation of educational content. The content
development of education was conducted at an extreme pace on the basis of a completely new
strategy and a number of new legal statutes. The important components of the new
development strategy included: a series of discussions between the central and increasingly
autonomous institutions; the elaboration of documents regulating content on the basis of
professional and societal debates; public opinion polls preceding the introduction of
fundamental documents; and the analyses assessing the effects of the measures. The
publication of new curricular documents, the launching of the reform of the testing system,
the establishment of the new system of in-service teacher training and other measures
mentioned above were all promoted by governmental acts. The sources required by these
steps were also provided for by the state budget.
There was also an organic connection between the central curricular research and
development on the one hand, and the content development initiatives evolving into an
innovative movement on the other. In the course of the six-year process of developing the
National Core Curriculum (1989-1995) for example, several local curricular achievements
were built into the evolving core curriculum in the framework of continuous professional
discussions. An unprecedented number of national professional conferences were organized,
several publications came out in large numbers, open discussion forums were established on
the pages of professional periodicals, and through the channels of the national public service
media (television and radio) information arising from professional debates, the opposing
views as well as the latest achievements, were communicated towards the entire society.
Having been channeled into the extensive and intensive social-professional harmonization
process and included in the central regulative documents, the achievements of spontaneous
local content developments which had taken place earlier could be institutionalized and
stabilized.
Amongst the institutions participating in content-related changes, we have to mention
the National Institute for Public Education (OKI) and the National Institute for Vocational
Education (NSZI). Founded in 1990 by the Ministry of Education, the OKI was given the task
in 1996, to create a sufficient selection of curricula for schools preparing their local curricula.
The OKI includes a unit engaged in program- and curriculum-development, which
continuously performs tasks related to content development. The definitive elements of its
activity are: subject observation; the systematized development of subject-related pedagogical
systems on the basis of research; and the promotion of methodological innovation.
Systematized subject development includes: the creation of a sufficient selection of teaching
materials; the elaboration of processes of assessment and quality development; the definition
and development of necessary pedagogical competencies; and the development of effective
teaching and learning methods.
The NSZI – which used to be supervised by the Ministry of Labor and now belongs to
the Ministry of Education – was responsible, among other things, for the development of the
qualification requirements and the educational content of professions enumerated in the
National Instruction Register as well as the coordination of related tasks. Its activity also
included the elaboration of the requirements of the vocational matriculation exam, the
harmonization of international and Hungarian qualification requirements, the operation of the
55
information system of vocational education and the organization of research and experiments
connected to vocational education.
2.2.2.2. Development programs and funds
Since the late 1980’s, the development programs and funds mentioned above have played a
significant role in the reform of the content of Hungarian public education. These programs
and funds offer support for different innovations – usually on the basis of an open grant
system.
As we saw above, the content development of the curriculum was based on classroom
practice in the 1990’s. The governmental support of this activity was dealt through the Fund
for the Development of Public Education (KÖFA) established in 1989 by the Ministry of
Education and later, through the Public Foundation for the Modernization of Public
Education (KOMA), which was established in 1995 – practically as the successor of KÖFA.
These developed a grant system in order to promote innovative processes. The grants invited
on a yearly basis were aimed at the preparation of pedagogical programs, curricula, the
elaboration of school models, the creation of processes of measurement and assessment, etc.
Table 1 contains the grant themes of the period between 1997 and 1999. These themes
illustrate some of the characteristic directions of Hungarian modernization efforts.
Table 1
Grants invited by the Public Foundation for the Modernization of Public Education
1997–1999
Title of grant Objective of the support

The inclusion of new fields into education, such as ecology, economy, law
Man and society and politics, religion, philosophy, analysis of personal conflicts and conflicts
between social groups, etc.
Complex local The publication of outstanding local curricula of different types of schools in
curricula a printed format and on the Internet.
In-service training of Support for the preparation of experts evaluating the pedagogical programs
experts developed by schools.
Initiatives promoting: the prevention of difficulties concerning learning and
integration; assistance for students in crisis; supporting children at risk or in
Mental hygiene in
socially disadvantaged positions; the handling of the drug problem within
the school
school; the preparation of children and students for self-knowledge, conflict
resolution and team-building.
Promoting the creation of modern electronic teaching materials, and the
Multimedia grant school-based utilization of opportunities provided by computer development
programs.
Promotion of educational work conducted at the 1–6 grade levels and of the
“Introductory phase
development of processes of differentiation, teaching materials and diagnostic
of school” grant
instruments enhancing such processes.
Improvement of
A grant announced in cooperation with the Ministry of Welfare for the
health-behavior of
promotion of the development of new curricula, methodological materials,
socially
information-, health- and in-service training programs and the enhancing of
disadvantaged
the preparation of professionals dealing with children at risk.
groups
Alternative Support for institutions adopting internationally acknowledged alternative
pedagogical pedagogical methods, or developing individual pedagogical programs or
program integration and adaptation programs.
56
Promotion of the teaching of world languages and the languages of

Foreign languages
neighboring countries as second languages, and of the development of
grant
curricular contents related to the European Union.
Pedagogical Development of the provision of services in small regions, the promotion of
cooperation of the organization of teachers’ working groups in such regions and support for
schools of “small decreasing the disadvantages of settlements provided in the framework of
regions”41 regional cooperation.
Improvement of
Institutional preparation for the accession to the European Union, promotion
international
of the development of extracurricular intercultural programs and support for
communication and
the international networking of teachers’ organizations.
European studies
Promotion of child-centered kindergarten education connected to the National
Kindergarten
Core Program of Pre-school Education and of the dissemination of programs
innovations grant
securing a smooth transition from kindergarten to school.
Education of Promotion of the development and standardization of psychological and
exceptionally pedagogical instruments of measurement for the selection of talented students
talented children and and support for the assurance of the professional and material conditions of
youth special training programs.
Professional
Support enabling kindergartens, schools and teacher training institutions to
literature support for
purchase professional literature.
teachers
Promotion of the development of personality- and community-building
“Dormitory life”
programs in dormitories, support for the operation of free-time activities,
grant
sport associations and student self-governments.
Application of the
Promotion of the participation of schools and teachers in research
results of
cooperation, support for the application of the results of completed research
pedagogical
projects.
research in schools
Environmental Support for the preservation and dissemination of local values and traditions.
values, local history Promotion of local patriotism.
Development, realization and dissemination of programs preparing students’
Development of
orientation in the market economy, for rational economic behavior and for
economic culture
reasonable household management.
Source: Report..., 2000
The monetary fund called Renewal of the Teaching Profession Project (PSZM)
established in 1992 also played an important role in promoting innovations and content
development initiatives at the institutional level during the early 1990’s. This fund supported
the development of pedagogical programs, textbooks, teaching materials and other
development materials through grants for years. The PSZM provided support for the creation
of more than 500 development-related products.
Aside from funds supporting institutional innovation, other structures providing access
to sources through grants were also established. In 1997 and 1998, when schools were obliged
to prepare their own pedagogical programs, the central budget provided financial support
from central sources appropriated for development, through which the necessary extra work
performed by teachers could be acknowledged. The schools could apply for these sources
from the central budget in the framework of a grant system. Maintainers could apply for
similar sources in order to be able to finance expert evaluation of pedagogical programs
adopted by schools. Self-governments have been eligible to apply for such central sources in
order to be able to finance the expert examinations serving as the basis of local development
41
An organizational form based on the mutual cooperation of municipalities
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and the evaluation of schools and local public education systems since 1999. It is also since
1999 that schools have been entitled to apply for resources, through which they may develop
their own quality assurance system within the framework of the Comenius 2000 program
mentioned above.
Based on the sources mentioned above, the ICT-development program entitled
SULINET – the objective of which, was to provide schools with Internet access and modern
information and communication technology equipment – was launched in 1997. This was
strengthened in 1998 by the IRISZ program aimed at filling the computer network that had
been created with adequate educational content and information material. Thanks to these
programs, all secondary schools and most primary schools were provided with a free Internet
access and a rich professional information background. The development of in-service teacher
training described above is also financed from these sources.
Another significant resource of development is the Vocational Training Fund,
providing funding for development in vocational education, including vocational education
carried out in secondary schools. The automatic refilling of this fund is guaranteed by the Act
on Employment, according to which employers – unless they directly organize some form of
training themselves – are obliged to pay a certain share of wages and salaries paid to
employees, into the Vocational Training Fund. The Ministry of Education is administering
this fund, however, social partners have a significant role in the distribution and a large
proportion of the fund’s sources are distributed in a decentralized system by bodies organized
at the regional (county) level.
The public foundations for the development of public education organized at the
county level – most of which were established in 1997 – play an increasingly important role in
providing support in accordance with the local needs of education. It is a great advantage of
these foundations that they are able to quickly and effectively adjust their resources to the
actual local needs in accordance with the appropriate objectives. The grants approved on the
basis of the decisions of boards of trustees of such public foundations contribute greatly to
local developments, which may also play a key role in overcoming regional differences. The
objectives of their grants embrace a wide range of problems of the development of Hungarian
education: the modernization of the content of education; development of teaching materials;
acquisition of equipment; ICT development; development in foreign language instruction;
development programs for national and ethnic minorities; school-based health education; the
development of the harmony of vocational education and the requirements of the labor
market; and so on.
Several important educational development programs that took place in the 1990’s
were financed from loans received from the World Bank. From the point of view of public
education, the secondary vocational education development program was the most important
one. This program promoted the content development in vocational secondary schools
mentioned above and also provided support in regards to other tasks (such as the adaptation of
the vocational apprentice school system, the development of the qualification system of
vocational education, and the creation of a research and information database for vocational
education). The goal of the World Bank’s Youth Vocational Education Program was to
develop a new organizational and content-related model of secondary vocational education
focusing on convertibility and providing a wide vocational basis for entering higher
education, as well as for rapid labor market oriented vocational training and shifting
occupations during one’s career. The teachers of the 61 schools selected in 1991 on the basis
of their applications launched, with the assistance of foreign experts, content-related
development in 13 professional groups. Aside from providing resources for acquiring
methodological assistance, the loan offered by the World Bank made it possible for schools to
appropriate teaching materials as well. Within the framework of the PHARE Program based
58
on support from the European Union and launched in 1993, the circle of the participating
vocational schools playing an active role in the content development of teaching materials
was widened.
Developments financed from PHARE sources have played an increasingly important
role from the late 1990’s. The objective of one of the first educational development programs
financed from PHARE resources was to reinforce the connection between business and
education (PHARE, 1997). As a part of this, two elements were related to public education.
One served the development of special forms of education for dropouts and young people at
risk and the support of institutions dealing with this field. The other was aimed at the creation
of short-term upper vocational education, which is partly organized within vocational
secondary schools. The first truly significant, explicitly public education-related PHARE
development program was launched at the beginning of the year 2000: the aim of the program
is to promote educational forms enhancing the social integration of dropouts, primarily of
Roma origin.
Since 1996 the educational programs of the European Union have had an increasing
impact on the content development of Hungarian public education. Here we must mention the
Socrates program supporting forms of cooperation in the field of educational development.
Hungary has been participating in the Comenius, the Lingua and the Arion programs since
1997. The Comenius program supports multilateral international school associations. The
programs realized so far have promoted the development of multicultural education and the
education of the children of immigrants, guest workers and Roma families. The Lingua
programs promote higher-quality foreign language learning at all levels of public education.
The Lingua support has made significant content development efforts (in regards to teaching
materials and programs) possible. The Arion program supports research required by content
development, primarily by funding foreign field trips.
The Public Education Development Program of the Soros Foundation – which spent
more than 1 billion Forints per year on supporting the development of Hungarian public
education between 1994 and 1998 – played an important role in the content-related reforms of
the 1990’s. Schools and – with some quantitative restrictions – other organizations and private
individuals performing public educational tasks could submit grant applications for these
resources. The grants of the Foundation served the following goals: promotion of the
education of socially disadvantaged groups, with special attention to socially disadvantaged
minorities; support for organizations and initiatives providing assistance to teachers; pre-
school education and education in the early school years; environmental and health education;
education of the Roma minority; support for alternative pedagogical initiatives; development
of educational management and teacher training. This program only provided support for the
dissemination of new instruments until their presence in schools reached a satisfactory level.
From the point of view of content-related educational development, the program for textbook
and teaching material development was of outstanding importance. This program contributed
to the launching of a periodical reviewing textbooks (Tandem) and made the establishment of
an award for textbooks (MásKép) possible. It was also the Soros Foundation that provided
support for the Self-developing Schools Program in 1996. Within the framework of this
program and through dissemination programs based on it, a wider range of schools acquired
techniques of institutional self-evaluation and program development. The Self-developing
Schools functioned as a type of local development and an in-service training workshop, which
actively participated in promoting the implementation process of the National Core
Curriculum. Their local pedagogical programs (including the local curricula) were based on
situation-analyses, in the preparation of which the parents were usually involved.
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2.2.2.3. Foreign examples and experts, international participants
The mediators of foreign educational and pedagogical information, the participants of

international cooperation and foreign experts were important figures of content development
in the 1990’s. The “positive” examples coming from Western Europe and from North
America and imported to Hungary by teachers, experts and researchers who had more and
more opportunities to travel from the 1980’s, provided inspiration and often patterns for the
leaders of educational experiments. Content development was enhanced by the growing
number of international pedagogical conferences and educational data coming from abroad
and disseminated by libraries (especially the National Pedagogical Library and Museum),
foundations, embassies and cultural institutions. There are significant forms of international
cooperation in the framework of which, an exchange of knowledge and information takes
place and against which the characteristics, achievements and shortcomings of the Hungarian
education system can be measured.
Participation in comparative international achievement surveys has the longest
tradition amongst all the forms of international cooperation. Hungary was the first Communist
country to join the IEA in 1969 and it has participated in its surveys ever since. The data of
the Hungarian participation in the IEA measurements (which include international
comparison) inspire from time to time professional debates and analyses, which had a deep
impact on the content-related development of the curriculum (for instance, the experts in
charge of developing the National Core Curriculum studied modern approaches to
curriculum-development in this framework).
A comprehensive country report on Hungarian education (OECD, 1995) was written
in 1993 as an element of Hungary’s preparation to join the OECD. The report contained
analyses and recommendations concerning the planning and development of educational
processes. Within the framework of the OECD, further country reports containing
recommendations in regards to content development were also prepared, e.g. the ones in
transition from school to work and lifelong learning (OECD, 1998; OECD, 1999). The
cooperation with OECD had an effect on content development processes in connection with
environmental education as well. In the framework of the ENSI (school initiatives in
environmental education), a comprehensive study was prepared on Hungarian environmental
education and wide-ranging international cooperation evolved in connection with the
establishment of eco-schools, the preparation of teacher training for environmental education
and the elaboration of school-based environmental educational indices.
The cultural representations of several greater Western European countries have also
played a role in the dissemination of foreign educational models, examples (methods and
content). Examples of such institutions are the British Council, which has supported the
teaching of the English language and other public education programs (e.g. content
development in civic and environmental education), the German Goethe Institute, which has
primarily contributed to the teaching of German and the development of the methodology of
foreign language instruction, and finally the French Institute, which supports the teaching of
French as a second language through assistance offered to teachers and schools.
In certain aspects bilateral and multilateral cooperation programs have also played a
significant role. The American-Hungarian cooperation for instance, had a deep impact on
education development programs promoting the establishment of democratic attitudes or the
development of environmental education. The Dutch-Hungarian cooperation influenced
development programs aimed at the development of the system of evaluation and testing and
the training of school leaders. The Swiss-Hungarian and the German-Hungarian cooperation
affected the development of in-service teacher training.
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2.2.2.4. Innovative, competitive professional workshops, schools and teachers
Competing schools, professional development workshops and innovative teachers’ groups

have played an exceptionally important role in content-related reforms in Hungary. The
1990’s particularly offered conditions for those workshops, which wished to develop their
own image and initiate innovations. Schools that found themselves in a competitive market
often used the content development of their curriculum as a weapon in the struggle for higher
student numbers – they offered new, non-traditional subjects from the first grade on.
According to estimations, approximately 20% of Hungarian schools published their
local curriculum and/or the results of their local content- and subject-related development
during the decade. However, the number of schools with a partial or more comprehensive
“hidden” local curriculum must have been much higher. The feverish pedagogical innovation
turned the development of local curriculum-versions into a movement, the products of which
could be seen at conferences and in-service teacher training seminars. Innovative schools
elaborated more than a hundred curricula diverging from the former central curriculum of
1978.
It must be emphasized that this did not come out of thin air. The first (and for a long
time final) school experiment applying progressive pedagogical approaches and provoking a
nationwide effect, was launched during the 1970’s by László Gáspár and his team in
SzenWOULQF, a settlement in Southern Hungary. Between 1969 and 1989 this was one of the
most important scientific workshops of pedagogical innovation, where experiments were
conducted concerning the radical reform of content, structure and schedule of school life, the
development of complex new subjects and the school-based realization of value-creating
working and economic activities.
The pedagogical workshop for value intermediation and skills development (ÉKP) led
by József Zsolnai started to have a far-reaching impact in the 1980’s. This systemized
initiative received experimental status in 1981, and was given a license as an alternative
pedagogical program that could be followed elsewhere in 1991. At the beginning of the
decade almost 110 schools were connected to the experimental school located in Törökbálint,
not far from Budapest. Its achievements concerning content development and the
development of the skills of students are directly reflected in the national curricular
documents, such as the National Core Curriculum and the framework curricula. They offered
new, non-traditional textbooks and teaching materials for their students every year and
contributed to the successful preparation of teachers with a series of new study-aids and
training programs. They introduced integrated subjects in several areas (e.g. studies on nature,
the society and mankind) and incorporated a number of non-traditional subject areas into the
educational process (e.g. dance/folk dance, puppetry, flute playing, acting, weaving). In
higher grades the Zsolnai curriculum contains subjects such as logic, the history of philosophy
and the history of science. Other significant developmental achievements are: teaching
materials dealing with entrepreneurial skills and the development of innovative skills, and the
subject entitled “economy”.
An important initiative of the 1990’s is the comprehensive school experiment program
(KOMP) led by Ferenc Loránd. The program supported from the central budget was launched
with the aim to create a 12-grade comprehensive school model (i.e. one providing general and
vocational education). The pedagogical objective of the KOMP is to develop a school in
which children stay together during the whole period of compulsory education. Strong
content-related differentiation is realized in the school, where the system of learning is
adjusted to the student’s personal areas of interest, learning capacity and rhythm of learning.
Meanwhile some of the schools integrate vocational education into its structure. The KOMP
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school experiment lays great emphasis on the pedagogical tasks of providing opportunities:
the model schools thoroughly explore the social-economic needs of their respective catchment
areas and adjust their professional development activities to these needs. The schools involved
in the program also deal with curricular, subject-, textbook and teaching material
development, as well as with quality development processes. The small region cooperation of
schools (e.g. the cooperation between the schools of a town and the neighboring villages)
constitutes an important element of the innovation.
As we already pointed out, the so-called alternative schools played a key role in the
different areas of content development. The term “alternative” originally meant divergence
from the “official” pedagogical practice and that these schools offered a curriculum different
from the national standard – usually paralleled with non-traditional pedagogical methods.
However, the results of their content development activity and their curricular supply
sometimes offered inspiration and models for mass education as well. Originally alternative
initiatives could only come into existence as permitted, individual school-based experiments.
The historical significance of alternative schools is unique in Hungary, since these schools
started to loosen up the monopoly of the socialist system of education by drawing attention to
the necessity of pluralism and creating the models for this pluralism through their innovations.
Alternative approaches often appeared within ordinary schools as well, and the teaching of
alternative pedagogy is present in teacher training and in-service training too. Let us draw
attention to some of the many alternative schools:
• One of the first alternative schools of the country to be established, is the Alternative High
School of Economy founded in 1988 by György Horn and his team. The school’s
pedagogical program is built around the principles of individualism, freedom and the
plurality of values. For its own curricula, the school developed textbook families, which
are applied, published and disseminated. They have organized in-service teacher training
courses since the mid-1990’s.
• One of the first alternative pedagogical workshops is the .LQFVNHUHV6FKRRO of Budapest,
which has been putting child-centered pedagogical principles into practice since 1988.
• The special curriculum and pedagogical methods of the Burattino School offer
development opportunities for disadvantaged children.
• The Belvárosi Tanoda school was established in order to offer a second chance for
dropouts and young people with disciplinary and integration problems to acquire the
secondary matriculation exam.
• The first Waldorf kindergarten and school was established in Solymár – a village not far
from Budapest – in 1989, and is maintained by the Waldorf Pedagogical Foundation. It has
been playing an important role in the practical realization of epochal education and the
development of the project method. By the early 1990’s, nine Waldorf schools had been
established.
• The pedagogical credo of the Montessori schools is centered on respect for children and
the belief in free self-development. The developing instruments of the Montessori schools,
enabling students to develop themselves, offer a rich model for other development
workshops and schools. The Budapest Montessori Association, which initiated several
content-related innovations, was founded in 1991.
2.2.2.5. Professional organizations and associations of teachers
The adoption of the act on association in 1989 created the legal basis of the establishment of
professional teachers’ organizations, associations and other social organizations. These
organizations pursue a wide range of activities: from the publication of books and periodicals
through the organization of conferences and other events, to establishing international
62
relationships. The number of registered professional teachers’ organizations was 117 in 1999.
One of their most important tasks is to represent teachers in organizations bringing decisions
in issues of public education, including issues of content development.
The organizations embracing members of different occupational groups within the
pedagogical profession, representatives of the same educational approach, or teachers of the
same subject, articulate opinions on questions related to their field, and in the course of the
discussions concerning legal regulations, also form professional standards. Through these
activities they have a deep impact on innovation related to content development. Their experts
perform professional tasks directly as well: they prepare and evaluate pedagogical programs,
curricula, textbooks and teaching materials. Some teachers’ organizations publish national
weeklies, periodicals and other publications, most of which pay attention to promoting
content development and the dissemination of results. The associations focusing their
activities on tasks related to content development (e.g. the Association of Creative Teachers
and Educational Institutions, the Association of Self-developing Schools, The Association of
Teachers of History, The Circle Chain National Association for Environmental Education, the
Association of Teachers of Computer Science and Information Technology, etc.) constitute
important professional bases of content development in certain areas of education.
Some concrete examples concerning the developmental activities of teachers’
organizations:
• The review of the National Instruction Register was directed and partly conducted by the
Hungarian Society for Vocational Education;
• Based on wide-ranging surveys aimed at the analysis of the situation, the Association of
Primary School Principals produced a series of studies on the quality assurance of
Hungarian schools;
• The Independent Teachers’ Forum prepared the Code of Ethics of Teachers, which
strengthened and shaped the ethical culture of teachers;
• In cooperation with the M. Wörner Foundation, the Teachers’ Faculty of the Hungarian
Historical Society held a series of lectures and – based on these – prepared a series of
publications entitled Hungary and Europe, which had a significant impact on educational
content development;
• The Faculty of Chemistry Teachers of the Society of Hungarian Chemists played an active
role in the content development of the chemistry subject;
• The National Association of Private Schools developed a system of school evaluation
making the complex evaluation and assessment of schools possible;
• The Hungarian Society of Environmental Education, the Circle Chain Association and
other organizations engaged in environmental education developed, in cooperation, one of
the most important documents of the field: the National Strategy of Environmental
Education;
• The Pedagogical Group of the Hungarian Society for Biology has been continuously
participating in the content development of the subject;
• The National Association of Art Teachers has actively participated in the development of
the professional concept of Internet labs and in the preparation of programs;
• Together with other organizations and associations the Association of Teacher Training
Providers continuously evaluated the drafts of governmental documents of content
development.
2.2.2.6. Providers of professional services
It is generally acknowledged in Hungary that the wide selection of professional services is a

fundamental condition of school autonomy. The providers of professional services financed
63
from national, regional and local budgets and operating as budgetary institutions (e.g. county-
level pedagogical institutes, cabinets and other such organizations) play an important role in
Hungarian content modernization. The self-governments of the counties are required to
maintain institutions for the providers of professional services, which directly assist the
operation of schools by providing information, professional advice, documentation, in-service
training programs and other pedagogical support. The experts and advisors working for
county-level pedagogical institutes performed important tasks in assisting and evaluating local
innovations and provided schools with active help in developing their own pedagogical
programs. The institutes maintain intensive working relations with the national research and
development workshops and centers. The most extensive and definitive part of their
international relations is constituted by the cross-border cooperation with neighboring
countries.
The significance of non-profit or profit-oriented private service providers is increasing
amongst professional providers. Most of these perform tasks related to evaluation, analyses,
and quality assurance upon the commission of the maintainers or the schools.
2.2.2.7. Textbook publishers
Textbook publishers – which have an important innovative effect – also play an important
role in content development. The Hungarian textbook market evolved in the years following
the transition. The former system of centralized, state-supported and monopolized textbook
publishing and supply was replaced by a new system based on the practice of a controlled
market economy. The primary aim of the control is to guarantee quality. The central state
subvention is given to consumers (i.e. to parents through the maintainers and the schools)
instead of the publishers.
During the 1990’s more than 60 private publishers participated in the development and
trade of textbooks and teaching materials. Their representatives are engaged in continuous
discussions with the central educational administration about regulations concerning
textbooks. The competition compels publishers to adapt to the needs of teachers and students
and to constantly update and improve the content of the books. This requires them to utilize
innovative results of local and national content development in the process of writing and
editing the textbooks. Several large and financially strong publishers maintain a network of
base and reference schools, and establish relations with regional and national institutions and
workshops engaged in development activities. Through their development, publishers initiate
the wider use of multimedia and electronic products in education.
The market of teaching materials is less transparent and organized. Partly due to the
lack of capital the number of workshops developing and manufacturing teaching materials
remained insufficient after the abolition of the state monopoly. Most of the required materials
(e.g. maps, audiovisual equipment) must be appropriated from foreign companies. However,
foreign producers of teaching materials fail to participate actively in the content development
of Hungarian education.
2.2.2.8. Higher education and the research sphere
Utilizing its mental capacity and scientific background, the Hungarian higher education also
contributed to the modernization of the content of education. A wide range of curricular
development is being conducted in the pedagogical and methodological faculties of the
institutions of higher education (teacher training colleges and universities). Teacher training
institutions perceive the need and the opportunities for, and the modernization of educational
content primarily through their professional relations with training schools. In-service teacher
training programs related to educational content development conducted at universities and
64
colleges also constitute an important element of the process. Apart from teacher training
institutions, several institutions of higher education took part in the development of
educational content. This includes professors and researchers of economic, technical and
medical universities as well as experts of agricultural education and art schools.
University professors and scientists are most often requested by the representatives
and leaders of institutions, private companies, publishers and schools to perform expert tasks
related to the preparation and evaluation of textbooks and curricula, and to participate in
different professional committees. It is common for a professor or researcher of a certain
institution of higher education to initiate a content-related development by approaching a
school or a maintainer with his or her innovative proposition. Such innovations took place for
instance in the field of health education (upon the initiatives of the professors of the
Semmelweiss Medical School or other institutions of higher medical education),
environmental ecology (e.g. the initiatives of the teachers of the College of Applied Arts), or
ethics (e.g. the initiatives of the University of Veszprém or the Institute of Sociology of the
Eötvös Loránd University).
2.2.2.9. Parents and other stakeholders
Families, as clients, belong to the group of stakeholders motivating content development.

Through their demands and decisions concerning the choice of schools, they directly
influence the competing schools performing content development tasks. Parents play other
roles in the life of schools as well – mainly as members of school boards (in this capacity they
are entitled to evaluate the school’s pedagogical program). Social organizations consisting of
parents and families often put forth recommendations expressing their demands concerning
the content of education to the leaders and maintainers of public education. Amongst the
organizations of parents actively dealing with educational issues, we may point out the
National Association of Big Families and the National Organization of Parents, which
evaluated the main documents regulating educational content and enhanced the definition of
the directions of content development through their recommendations.
The participants of the business sector must also be mentioned here. Representatives
of the economic life took an active part in the content development of vocational education
and the reform of the system of qualification since the early 1990’s. This has mainly been
carried out within the framework of the National Council for Vocational Education and –
since 1999 – the National Council for Public Education, but they were also present in working
groups developing educational materials for different professions and occupations, as well as
in bodies responsible for the regional distribution of development resources.
2.2.2.10. Creative teachers, researchers and developers
The initiators of pedagogical innovations are always concrete personalities: the most
important innovations are tied to creative individuals whose activity leaves a trace on the
Hungarian school system. Some of them have already been mentioned, such as the late László
*iVSiULQLWLDWRURIWKH6]HQWOULQFVFKRROH[SHULPHQWZKLFKZDVDIRUHUXQQHURIWKHFRQWHQW
developments of the 1980’s and 90’s, or József Zsolnai, leader of the Linguistic and Literary
Communication and the Value Intermediary School Development innovation programs. Some
experts (Endre Ballér, Zoltán Báthory, József Nagy, Péter Szebenyi), who had participated in
the international cooperation for pedagogical research and had adapted and disseminated its
results since the 1970's, played a definitive role in the creation of the National Core
Curriculum. Amongst the researchers and innovators influencing the content development of
the 1990's, we have to mention educational philosopher Ottó Mihály, who actively dealt with
issues of school development, Sándor Illyés, who used to be the chairman of the National
65
Council for Public Education, Zsuzsa Mátrai, who played an indispensable role in the
development of the subject entitled “social sciences”, but who also dealt with the reform of
the system of evaluation and the matriculation exam, or researcher of literature Zsuzsa
Horváth, who took part in professionally coordinating the creation of the framework
curricula.
The people mentioned above are all teachers working in higher education, who
established intellectual workshops and professional groups engaged in development.
However, several practitioners also had an influence on the system of content regulation, such
as László Szabó, head of one of the county-level pedagogical institutes, György Horn,
principal of the above mentioned Alternative High School of Economy, György Szenes, who
deals with vocational education, or Tamás Vekerdy, whose specializes in fields of pre-school
education, teacher training and the dissemination of the Waldorf-pedagogy. Besides the ones
mentioned here, thousands of teachers, experts, advisors, researchers, practitioners and
theoreticians participated in the content development of Hungarian education during the
1980's and 90's (the names and fields of some of them are enumerated in Annex 5).
2.2.3. New content
The above outlined process of content reform led to the appearance of a number of new
content programs in schools. Some of these have been mentioned earlier. It is necessary to
point out that under the specific Hungarian circumstances, school-level introduction of new
subjects and contents was often motivated by the fact that such measures made it possible for
schools to realize their expansive aspirations. An especially large amount of local
development was carried out in the following fields: computer science and information
technology, dance and folk dance, foreign languages, self-knowledge, household
management, studies related to nature and visual culture. Denominational schools often
develop new subjects based on theology.
Programs embracing environmental and health education are also expanding rapidly –
these include information about the natural, the artificial (man-made) and the social
environment. Programs and subject development connected to the preservation of health are
primarily attached to biology. They are differentiated according to age groups and deal in
detail with issues of physical, psychological and social health as well as the main rules of the
prevention of illnesses. A typical field of curricula dealing with health education is that of
drug prevention programs.
Content development also concerns the new fields of knowledge acknowledged by the
National Core Curriculum and the framework curricula. Information and communication
education, civic education, household management, information technology and foreign
languages have become the primary fields of development. The future of strategies of
curriculum planning in Hungary seems to point into the direction of systematization. In
certain fields, comprehensive and systematized content development is likely to become
necessary in the future. Such fields are ICT education, natural sciences (including
environmental and health education) and the pedagogy of sustainability – in the broader
sense.
2.2.4. Planning, introduction and evaluation of reforms
The planning and introduction of the curricular reform in Hungary embraces a period of more
than ten years and the process has not been completed as of the date of the preparation of this
report. Some important characteristics are, however, described below.
66
2.2.4.1. The creation of national curricular documents
As shown above, the creation of national curricular documents was a process that took years.
The development of the National Core Curriculum began in 1989 and the government in 1995
adopted the document itself. The preparation of the framework curricula was much shorter –
the process started in 1998 and the Ministry of Education published the curricula in 2000.
We have already mentioned that the introduction of the new system of curricular
regulation was accompanied by a long professional and political debate. Professional bodies
established by the Ministry of Education and which consist of numerous experts created the
new national documents. The Ministry of Education was coordinating the process of
development directly in the case of both the National Core Curriculum and the framework
curricula. In both cases the work begun with the drafting of a strategic concept, on the basis of
which the committees, organized in accordance with the structure of subjects or fields of
knowledge, could begin working. The work of these committees was in all cases supervised
by an integrative body. In the case of the framework curricula the committees were organized
according to school-types and subjects operated simultaneously. A number of versions were
prepared for both the national Core Curriculum and the framework curricula. Together with
the strategic concept these versions were sent to schools and professional organizations so that
they could formulate their opinion on the documents. In both cases, a way to do so was
through data collection with the help of questionnaires. Thus, the documents were prepared in
the framework of intensive communication between the decision makers and the schools.
2.2.4.2. The process of implementation
The preparation and implementation of the two new central curricular documents (both of
which are in force at present) and the creation of the independent local pedagogical programs
of schools were probably the most important events of Hungarian public education in the
1990’s. The implementation of the new curricula has and will be put up to serious testing – a
learning process in itself – both by the educational management and teaching staffs. As
pointed out, the preparation of school-based programs was a completely new phenomenon in
Hungarian public education: neither teacher training nor in-service training had prepared
teachers for either the local planning of pedagogical work or the earlier preparation of
curricula. Therefore, in the process of the implementation of the National Core Curriculum
(NCC) the central governance of education had to take a significant role in developing the
teachers’ competence in this respect as well.
After the introduction of the NCC in 1995, the first task was to make the most
important target groups – the teachers and the maintainers – acquainted with this completely
new system of content regulation and the core curriculum itself, and to create the conditions
of its utilization. Implementation required significant financial sources, primarily because less
than 10% of schools had earlier individualized programs, and institutions which were not
familiar with the preparation process of curricular documents required a great deal of
professional assistance.
Masses of teachers took part in courses related to the implementation of the NCC. Part
of the reason for this was that a significant resource of development only usable for in-service
teacher training (2% of the budgetary support provided for self-governments for educational
purposes), and which could be spent by schools on tuition fees, additional costs (e.g. travel
expenses) and the replacement of teachers participating in the training, was opened in the
period of implementation. In the period of the implementation of the NCC, schools spent the
largest share of this amount on participation in training courses on program planning and the
preparation of local curricula and on in-service training programs, which analyzed individual
fields of knowledge of the NCC. Most of these courses were organized by providers of
67
professional services and pedagogical institutes operating in the counties, but schools,
universities and private companies provided such training programs as well. Although no
aggregate data is available for the national level, according to estimations, every third
Hungarian teacher participated in some program related to curricula.
The representatives of the maintainers in charge of educational issues also participated
in great numbers in shorter courses which interpreted the role of school maintainers and
which set the new curricular regulations into operation. Educational experts evaluating the
pedagogical programs of schools before the approval of those (schools were obliged to
request such evaluations) also required training during the three-year period provided for the
preparation of local curricula. By the time of approval, maintainers could select from amongst
almost 4000 experts.
The Ministry of Education was legally obliged to offer the institutions of public
education a rich selection of classified curricula, which they may apply as their own curricula,
or – through smaller adjustments – adapt to their own unique local conditions (or simply be
used as a model for developing their own local curriculum). The range of curricula was
sufficient, however – due to the lack of serious professional analysis – it is hard to judge the
quantity of curricula offered by the Ministry.
In the process posing a real challenge for all participants, some typical problems arose.
Some of the model curricula included in the database were too detailed: these particularly
localized curricula, which reduced the schools’ scope of action. The quality assurance of the
curricula could not be entirely provided for, a result of which some not exactly “NCC-
compatible” curricula, as well as documents of poorer quality were disseminated nationwide.
According to some analysts, the wide selection of curricula had negative effects as well: it
“spoiled” schools and failed to inspire them to utilize their local innovative energies.
According to research data, only 8% of primary schools and 15% of secondary schools
developed entirely independent local curricula – the rest used external curricular sources
(Jelentés, 2000). In the 3 years provided for by law, every school prepared its own
pedagogical program including its local curriculum based on the NCC and the requirements of
the basic knowledge exam to be taken after grade 10 and the matriculation exam.
The Ministry of Education commissioned the OKI, the largest national institute of
professional service providers of public education, to establish a selection of classified
curricula that can be adapted, taken over or built into local curricula and to disseminate these
amongst potential users. In order to do this, the standard format of curricula was elaborated
upon, which served the unification of diverging curricular interpretations. The OKI contacted
well-known developing workshops (schools, experts, teachers, faculties, textbook publishers,
and professional organizations) and assisted them in shaping their innovative products to the
predetermined form. Modern information technology was given a decisive role in the
formalization of the curricular selection and the dissemination of “completed” curricula: for
instance a computerized national database was established, which made it possible to
electronically edit, register and disseminate curricula (this was further assisted by a
nationwide network of regional information and providing centers). The expansion of network
communication provided an increasing number of schools with access to products in the
national curricular database through the Internet.
The process of implementation was greatly hindered by the fact that a large part of the
selection of classified curricula was only completed by the second phase of the
implementation period. Another difficulty was caused by the fact that a relatively low number
of curricula were complete (i.e. extending to all grades and fields of knowledge of at least one
full pedagogical phase). The use of modern, but unfamiliar communication technology also
caused several problems. The curricula regarded as satisfactory from the point of view of the
NCC were placed in the database and on the home page of the OKI, however, only several
68
schools had access to the documents directly through these channels (only more than half of
the educational institutions had an external computer connection at this time). Since the
curricula had to be brought into the vicinity of the consumers, it became necessary to develop
and operate a network of so called service points (spread evenly across the country), which
could provide the teachers with the selected curricula in both electronic and printed formats.
The selection was further enriched by the freely accessible, printed curricula of 19 educational
institutions chosen in the course of a competition organized by the Ministry and by (revised)
curricula prepared by textbook publishers for their existing textbooks and textbook-families.
The greatest problem, however, was caused by the uneven quality of curricula.
The gradual extension of general education up to the 10th grade of vocational
institutions (where earlier specialized vocational education had been conducted from the 9th
grade) started in 1998. As a result of the reform, actual vocational education does not begin
before the 11th grade, vocational secondary schools and vocational apprentice schools could
only include so-called career orientation and professional preparation programs for the 9th
and 10th grades in their local curricula. The local management of these new subjects was
facilitated by classified curricula ordered, and in-service training programs organized by the
NSZI.
One of the greatest problems was caused by the fact that the pedagogical cycles
defined by the NCC did not fit into the school structure of the former system. Conforming to
the age limit of compulsory education (which was extended to 16 years of age), the NCC
regulated educational content until the 10th grade (where most students are 16 years old),
however, there was no school in Hungary where the 10th grade constituted the final year. In a
curricular sense, this regulation “split in two” the upper secondary (ISCED 3) phase of the
8+4 school structure: the NCC contained no guidelines for the final two years (grades 11 and
12), so high schools and vocational secondary schools had to plan the local curriculum for
these two grades on the basis of requirements defined for the matriculation exam. The NCC
did not explicitly prefer either of the existing Hungarian school structure types (8+4, 4+8,
6+6), whilst the two main pedagogical cycles defined in the core curriculum (grades 1–6 and
grades 7–10) did not link with the usual pedagogical cycles incorporating grades 1–4, 5–8 and
9–12. Instead it seemed to lead to the formation of a new structural model. This was
underlined by the fact that the Public Education Act stated that the NCC shall be introduced in
an ascending system in the 1st and 7th grades, which meant a difficult adaptation task for
more than 90% of schools – only six-grade high schools could cope with the problem without
serious internal changes.
We have already referred to the fact that the period of the elaboration of the new
central curricular documents, and especially the introduction of the NCC was accompanied by
professional and political debates of varying intensity. According to opinion poll data, the
acceptance of the NCC amongst teachers was about 60%. Whilst only a smaller part of the
criticism concerned the document itself, many teachers criticized the process of
implementation. Those groups which regarded the core curriculum as being too “soft” for an
instrument of regulation were worried about the sustainability of the permeation between
schools and the quality of education (since the core curriculum contained minimum
requirements as well), and they sometimes predicted the “disintegration” of education. The
NCC was most solidly supported by 6-grade high schools and those educational institutions,
which begun with the introduction of content-related innovation as early as the late 1980’s
(15% of primary schools and most 12-grade schools). 4-grade high schools (where the
educational process was split in two by the closing of the basic curriculum prescribed for the
10th grade) were the most fervent critics of the document. 8- and 4-grade high schools
showed the strongest resistance to introducing new subjects and elements of knowledge, since
69
they were eager to keep the number of the hours of instruction of traditional subjects, which
were considered to be important from the point of view of entering into higher education.
The second phase of the implementation of curricular reform started with the
publication of the framework curricula. The framework curricula were issued on 30 August
2000 by a ministerial decree, so their implementation cannot be described at the time of the
preparation of this report. In the course of professional discussions, the framework curricula
were well received in most cases. The Ministry sent the basic principles of the framework
curricula and the first lesson-plans to all schools and professional pedagogical organizations,
requesting their opinions in the form of a questionnaire and informally as well. The opinions
show that teachers generally support the concept of framework curricula, they agree with its
subject structure and believe that their local curriculum will be adjustable to the framework
curriculum proposed for their type of school. With the exception of mathematics and natural
science subjects, relatively few teachers criticized the compulsory number of hours of
instruction defined by the proposed lesson-plans. At the same time most schools requested
that the subject “technology” not included in the framework curricula be restored for all
grades. Similar to that of the NCC, the introduction of the framework curricula puts the
greatest burden on vocational schools (and especially on their 9th and 10th grades) from the
point of view of adaptation. At the time of the preparation of this report, the debates
concerning the application of the framework curricula in this sector had not come to an end.
The implementation of the framework curriculum is accompanied by fewer central
developmental actions than that of the NCC. No new classified programs were prepared upon
the request of the Ministry and the intensity of the preparation of teachers is smaller as well.
The central educational management primarily urges textbook publishers to publish textbooks
which are compatible with the framework curricula for grades in which the local curricula
adjusted to the new central documents are likely to be introduced in the near future, with
grants facilitating the development of complex pedagogical systems harmonizing the
curriculum with textbooks, teaching materials, instruments of evaluation and measurement
and the in-service training of teachers.
2.2.4.3. The evaluation of the reforms
Most of the decisions concerning the reform of the content of Hungarian public education
have been delivered in the past few years. Until the time of the writing of this report (January
2001) only the introduction of the National Core Curriculum had been implemented. The
introduction of the new central curricula (the framework curricula) will start in September
2001, with the reform of the system of exams taking place even later. In harmony with the
introduction of the framework curricula the new two-tier matriculation exam will probably be
applied in 2005 at the earliest, and only those students will be required to sit for the
completely new basic knowledge exam after completing their studies at grade 10, who started
school in the 1998/99 school year.42
Since several elements of the content reform have not yet been implemented, no
comprehensive evaluation is possible at this point. As in the case of other decentralized
systems, it is difficult to acquire detailed information on the processes of content regulation of
the strongly decentralized system of Hungarian public education conducted at the institutional
level. In order to collect sufficient data, national authorities launched a number of research
programs of significant scope in the late 1990’s. For instance, data collection concerning more
42
The basic knowledge exam will be compulsory only for a small group (approx. 10%) of secondary students:
those individuals who are obliged to acquire the basic knowledge certificate in order to undertake professional
exams. These students will first be required to take the basic knowledge exam between 2008 and 2010.
70
than 1000 institutions was performed in regards to the preparation process of local curricular
documents developed on the basis of the NCC and concerning the content of local curricula.
The results of these surveys show that schools adhered to their legal obligations: they
prepared the most important document of content regulation, the pedagogical program
(including the local curriculum) and approved it on time. From the viewpoint of school
principals, schools received more central professional assistance than help form local
maintainers in the course of this process. In connection with the pedagogical programs,
intensive professional communication concerning content-related questions started to evolve
between schools and their maintainers. Educational institutions in general were satisfied with
the degree of central assistance, the selection of classified curricula and the number of training
courses, whilst the quality of most in-service training courses and the usefulness of some
curricular sources were heavily criticized.
The examination of local curricula and curricular selection showed that some new
fields of knowledge introduced by the NCC (e.g. information technology, household
management, dance) were included in all school-based curricula, but also revealed that certain
fields (e.g. film culture, media studies, civic and economic education, human studies and
career orientation) are mostly neglected.
According to data provided by surveys, schools wish to provide pupils of lower grades
with a uniform and solid basis for the acquisition of cultural information, so most groups are
instructed on the basis of uniform study plans, but the degree of differentiation between
parallel classes increases at higher grades. This trend may be a sign of the consideration of
real developmental needs of groups progressing in a different pace and in different fields of
interest, but it may also lead to the reduction of permeability between the individual schools.
The research results reinforced the aspirations of the educational policy concerning
curricular homogenization. The stated objective of these aspirations is to bring the content of
local educational services closer to each other and to force schools to introduce new elements
of knowledge – the main instrument of these efforts being the framework curricula. The shift
of balance in favor of the central level in the shared responsibility of content-related issues
obviously brings with itself the weakening of the autonomy of the institutional level.
2.2.5. Results and problems
The content-related changes and developments described above have brought along a number
of achievements, but have also raised new problems and yet unanswered questions. Some of
these have been mentioned earlier (in the first chapter). Due to the enormous pace and
complexity of the innovation process, the evaluation of the effects of changes – including the
products of innovation – had not started until the late 1990’s. The exploration and
enumeration of achievements and new problems is a task to be carried out by future analyses,
however, some are worth mentioning:
• New, previously non-existent subjects and increasingly independent fields of (integrated)
education were developed (media studies, civic education, ethics, human studies,
environmental education, education aiming at sustainable consumption).
• The community of teachers became very active, with a number of teachers participating in
in-service training courses.
• Diverse international cooperation has evolved in order to facilitate content development.
• A system of regulation was developed, which opens the way for local development under
the supervision of adequate quality control.
• The quality of innovative products developed in the recent decades is rather uneven. Whilst
several content-related developments realized in school practice (curricula, textbooks,
programs, etc.) were followed up through action research and by other means, a significant
71
proportion of development results are yet to be validated through introduction and

implementation in the pedagogical practice.
• The documents of content regulation, related guidelines and decrees meant a drastic
change to the inner world of schools. The degree and density of the change of curricula,
programs, textbooks and the paradigmatic change of development strategies required the
community of teachers, maintainers, experts and educational policy-makers to react in an
extremely rapid manner.
• The changes had to be implemented in a very short time and under great pressure. Several
details were unclear and sometimes the proper harmonization of curricula, textbooks and
educational competencies was lacking.
• Whilst resources appropriated for development are significant in number, the financial
conditions for the mass-scale dissemination of the results of development are rather
unfavorable. Due to the lack of funding, schools adapt the more expensive innovations
only slowly or to a lesser extent, which slows down the dissemination of successful
innovations.
• Within the ranks of severely underpaid public servants, the community of teachers is
regarded as one of the worst paid groups. The real value of teachers’ salaries decreased by
approximately 40% by the middle of the decade, which lead to the lack of motivation,
whilst the deteriorating social prestige of the profession causes problems in regards to
recruitment.
• The protracted reform of teacher training delays the dissemination of effective pedagogical
competencies focused on development and utilizing some instruments of self-evaluation.
• The intensity of the cooperation and coordination in curricular development with experts of
cognitive, behavioral and social sciences is far from sufficient.
• The amount of feedback on the extent to which new curricular content can be taught and
learnt is minute.
• The coordinated operation of research and development institutions, the systematization
and professionalization of development are hindered by the lack of a sufficiently
elaborated educational research and development policy. The conditions of research and
developmental work are not in accordance with the amount of challenges researchers and
developers are facing.
On the basis of what has been said above, it seems necessary to articulate some conclusions,
which might be of an interest for the international debate. The solution of problems indicated
above require general organizational development, the dissemination of the methods of
development and evaluation, the assurance of the competencies of freshly graduating teachers
(the general reform of teacher training), and the development of methods guaranteeing the
introduction of pilot projects into the mainstream. Within the development of curricular
content, particular attention must be paid to school-development, the development of teaching
materials and competencies and to the quality assurance of the whole system. Local
innovations are to be supported from central, regional and local sources, and professional as
well as financial resources are required to do so. The effect of present curricular content
requires research from the point of view of cognitive psychology and the sociology of
knowledge. Comparative international analyses are also necessary. Professional quality
assurance concerning the market of textbooks and teaching materials is also indispensable –
along with the development of teaching material and textbook evaluation based on the results
of regular theoretical curricular research.
72
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75
List of Abbreviations
BM Belügyminisztérium (Ministry of the Interior)
IEA International Association for the Evaluation of Education
Achievement
KÁOKSZI Kiss Árpád Országos Közoktatási Szolgáltató Intézmény (Kiss Árpád
National Public Education Service Institution)
KIFIR Középiskolai Felvételi Információs Rendszer (Secondary School
Admission Information System)
KSH Központi Statisztikai Hivatal (Central Statistical Office)
NAT Nemzeti alaptanterv (National Core Curriculum)
NSZI Nemzeti Szakképzési Intézet (National Institute for Vocational
Education)
OKI Országos Közoktatási Intézet (National Institute for Public Education)
OKÉV Országos Közoktatási Értékelési és Vizsgaközpont (National Public
Education Center for Evaluation and Testing)
OKJ Országos Képzési Jegyzék (National Instruction Register)
OKNT Országos Köznevelési Tanács (National Council for Public Education)
OKT Országos Képzési Tanács (National Council for Vocational
Education)
OM Oktatási Minisztérium (Ministry of Education)
OSZVN 2UV]iJRV6]DNpUWLpV9L]VJi]WDWiVL1pYMHJ\]pN 1DWLRQDO5HJLVWHURI
Experts and Testing)
PM Pénzügyminisztérium (Ministry of Finance)
PSZM Pedagógus Szakma Megújítása Projekt (Renewal of the Teaching
Profession Project)
76
Annex 1 – The Structure of the Hungarian School System
The structure of the Hungarian education system

and the student flows
Labour market and in-service training programmes

ISCED
Doctoral programmes 6
AGE
University (5-6 years)
5
Higher education evening and
23
higher education
Non university
correspondence courses
of Technical
Accredited
Grades 5-6
vocational
courses (2
Other post
vocational
Secondary
secondary
courses
higher
ADULT EDUCATION
Schools
4.
Matriculation examination
18 4 year Vocational Basic

8 year gymnasium
6 year gymnasium
3
secondary
schools
knowledge
Adult
gymnasiu training
examination
m school
Basic special education
14
2
12 Basic (general) school

1
10
Kindergartens 0
6
77
Annex 2 – Lesson Plans for Different Types of Schools (Programs)

Lesson plan proportions as defined in the National Core Curriculum adopted in 1995 divided
by fields of knowledge in accordance with the main pedagogical cycles (grades 1- 10)
Proportion of lesson plans in percentages in the

different pedagogical cycles
Field of knowledge 1-4. 5-6. 7-8. 9-10.
Hungarian language and literature 32-40 16-20 11-13 11-13
Foreign language - 11-15 9-12 9-13
Mathematics 19-23 16-20 10-14 10-14
Man and society 4-7 5-9 10-14 10-14
Man and nature 5-9 8-12 16-22 15-20
Our earth and environment - - 4-7 4-7
Arts 12-16 12-16 9-12 9-12
Information technology - 2-4 4-7 4-7
Education for practical life 4-7 5-9 6-10 5-9
Physical education and sports 10-14 9-13 6-10 6-10
Source: National Core Curriculum, 1995
The subject system and the hours of instruction as defined in the framework curriculum
adopted in 2000 for the first phase of primary education (grades 1-4)
Annual number of hours of instruction by grades

Subject
1. 2. 3. 4.
Hungarian language and literature 296 296 296 259
Foreign language 111
Environmental class 37 37 74 74
Music 37 37 74 56
Drawing and visual culture 56 55 74 55
Technology and way of life 37 37 37 37
Physical education and sports 92 92 92 92
Total number of fixed hours of
703 702 795 795
instruction
Freely planned hours of instruction 37 38 37 37
Compulsory number of hours of
740 832
instruction
Source: The framework curricula of primary education, 2000
78
The subject system and hours of instruction as defined in the framework curriculum adopted
in 2000 for the second phase of primary education (grades 5-8)

Subject
5. 6. 7. 8.
History and civic education 74 74 74 74
Foreign language 111 111 111 111
Information technology 37 37
Natural education 74 74
Physics 74 55
Biology 55 55
Chemistry 55 56
Our earth and environment 56 55
Music 37 37 37 37
Drawing and visual culture 55 55 37 37
Technology and way of life 37 37 37 37
Tutorial class 37 37 37 37
Curricular modules:
Dance and drama 18 18
National and folk education 18 18
Information technology 18
Human and social education, ethics 37
Film and media education 37
Health education 18 18
851 851 980 980
instruction
925 1017
instruction
Source: The framework curricula of primary education, 2000
79
The subject system and hours of instruction of the framework curriculum adopted in 2000 for
grades 9-12 of high schools

Subject
9. 10. 11. 12.
History 74 74 111 96
Behavioral science and ethics 37
1st foreign language 111 111 111 96
2nd foreign language 111 111 111 96
Information technology* 74
Introduction into philosophy 32
Physics 56 92 74
Biology 56 74 64
Chemistry 74 74
Our earth and environment 74 74
Music* 37 37
Drawing and visual culture* 37 37
Curricular modules:
Social education 18 18 18 16
Dance and drama* 18 18
Film and media education 18 16
Arts 37 32
1055 1073 962 800
instruction
1110 1110 1110 960
instruction
Source: The framework curricula of secondary education I., 2000
The hours of instruction of subjects and curricular modules bearing the sign “*” may be reorganized between
grades in the local curriculum.
80
grades 9-12 of vocational secondary schools

Subject
9. 10. 11. 12.
History and civic education 74 74 74 96
Social education and ethics 37
Foreign language 111 111 111 96
Music 37 37
Drawing and visual culture 37 32
Physics
Our earth and environment
Biology 259 259 74 64
Chemistry
Information technology
Professional orientation 185 185 296 256
Professional preparation 185 185 296 256
Freely planned hours of instructions 74 74 111 96
Total 1110 1110 1110 960
Source: The framework curricula of secondary education II., 2000
The hours of instruction of subjects bearing the sign “*” may be reorganized between grades in the local
curriculum..
81
grades 9-12 of vocational training schools.
Version A*
Annual number of hours
Subject of instruction by grades Grades of vocational training
9. 10.
Hungarian language and Schools shall provide students with
111 111
literature 222 hours of public studies per year.
History and social Of these, in the first grade of
74 74
education vocational training, 37 hours shall be
Foreign language 111 111 appropriated for the teaching of
social studies and ethics. Otherwise
Mathematics 111 111 the content of the timeframe to be
Information technology 37 37 spent on public studies is defined by
the local curriculum.
Natural and health
148 74-148
education
Music 37 37
Drawing and visual
37 37
culture
Physical education and
74 74
sports
Career orientation 74
Professional preparation 222
Professional
296-370
preparation/basic skills
Tutorial class 37 37
Total number of fixed
1073 1073
hours of instruction
Freely planned hours of
37 37
instructions
Compulsory number of
hours of instruction as 1110 1110
prescribed by the law
* Version A is aimed at the development of functional skills, which are fundamental from the point of view of
entering into vocational education.
82
grades 9-12 of vocational training schools.
Version B*
Annual number of hours
Subject of instruction by grades Grades of vocational training
9. 10.
Hungarian language and Schools shall provide students with
111 111
literature 222 hours of public studies per year.
History and social Of these, in the first grade of
74 74
education vocational training, 37 hours shall be
Foreign language 111 111 appropriated for the teaching of
social studies and ethics. Otherwise
Mathematics 111 111 the content of the timeframe to be
Information technology 37 37 spent on public studies is defined by
the local curriculum.
Physics 74 74
Biology, health
74 74
education
Chemistry 37 37
Our earth and
74
environment
Music 37 37
Drawing and visual
37 37
culture
Physical education and
74 74
sports
Professional
185 259
preparation/basic skills
Tutorial class 37 37
Total number of fixed
1073 1073
hours of instruction
Freely planned hours of
37 37
instructions
Compulsory number of
hours of instruction as 1110 1110
prescribed by the law
* Version B is aimed at the widening of knowledge and the acquisition of skills for those students who enter
schools with a more solid educational background, and for those who may be subject to greater workloads.
83
Annex 3 – Statistical Tables
Table 1
Per capita GDP of OECD countries in the proportion of different base numbers, 1996
OECD- EU-average Austria = Hungary =

Country USA = 100
average = 100 = 100 100 100
Luxembourg 160 162 114 144 342
USA 140 142 100 126 299
Norway 128 130 92 115 273
Switzerland 126 127 90 113 268
Japan 121 122 86 108 257
Iceland 118 119 84 106 252
Denmark 117 118 83 105 248
Canada 114 116 82 103 244
Belgium 112 113 80 100 238
Austria 111 113 80 100 237
Germany 107 108 77 96 229
Australia 107 108 76 96 228
the Netherlands 106 107 76 95 226
France 103 104 73 92 219
Italy 102 103 73 92 217
Sweden 100 101 72 90 214
United Kingdom 98 99 70 88 209
Finland 96 97 68 86 204
Ireland 92 93 66 82 196
New Zealand 88 89 63 79 188
Spain 77 78 55 69 164
Portugal 70 70 50 62 148
Slovenia 67 67 48 60 143
Greece 67 67 48 60 142
Czech Republic 64 65 46 57 136
Hungary 47 47 33 42 100
Slovakia 45 45 32 40 95
Mexico 36 37 26 32 77
Poland 35 35 25 31 74
Source: Balogh, 1999
84
Table 2
Number of age groups born between 1975–1999 on 1 January 1999
Year Number
1975 189 092
1976 177 737
1977 170 587
1978 161 757
1979 154 379
1980 143 587
1981 137 942
1982 129 196
1983 122 981
1984 120 828
1985 126 135
1986 124 218
1987 122 930
1988 121 527
1989 120 784
1990 123 459
1991 124 968
1992 119 733
1993 115 405
1994 114 094
1995 110 695
1996 104 075
1997 99 308
1998 96 467
1999* 94 098
Source: KSH, Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyv, 1998
*
Preliminary date.
Table 3
Estimated number of school age groups between 2000 and 2006 (in thousands)
Year Aged Aged Aged Total
6–9 10–13 14–17
2000 478 000 489 000 497 000 1464 000
2002 450 000 489 000 494 000 1433 000
2004 417 000 478 000 488 000 1383 000
2006 396 000 449 000 489 000 1334 000
Source: Jelentés…, 2000.
85
Table 4
The distribution of population aged 15 and older according to levels of education
TOTAL size of
vocational apprentice
population aged secondary primary school – primary school – No formal
Year higher education school or vocational
15 and older (in education 8 grades 7 or less grades education
training school
thousands)
proportion proportion proportion proportion proportion proportion
number number number number number number
% % % % % %
1960 7432 176 2,3 459 6,2 ----- ----- 1804 24,3 4745 63,8 248 3,3
1970 8145 301 3,7 907 11,1 448 5,5 2529 31,1 3796 46,6 164 2,0
1980 8368 485 5,8 1382 16,5 922 11,0 2743 32,8 2741 32,8 95 1,1
1990 8244 723 8,8 1544 18,7 1234 15,0 2938 35,6 1708 20,7 97 1,2
1996 8370 846 10,1 1899 22,7 1583 18,9 2805 33,5 1172 14,0 65 0,8
Source: Educational statistics and statistical announcements of OM
* Source: KSH
Table 5
Distribution of the working population according to levels of education
vocational
TOTAL number o
secondary
apprentice school primary school – primary school –
Year working population higher education Less than 6 grades
education or vocational 8 grades 6 or 7 grades
(thousand person)
training school
proportion proportion proportion proportion proportion proportion
number number number number number number
% % % % % %
1960 4760 151 3,2 346 7,2 ------ ------ 1175 24,7 2066 43,4 1022 21,5
1970 4989 258 5,2 694 13,9 388 7,8 1701 34,1 1391 27,9 557 11,1
1980 5069 413 8,1 1071 21,1 854 16,9 1794 35,4 692 13,7 245 4,8
1990 4527 555 12,3 1123 24,8 1103 24,4 1511 33,4 149 3,3 86 1,9
1996* 3485 585 16,8 1091 31,3 1066 30,6 706 20,3 22 0,6 15 0,4
Source: Educational statistics and statistical announcements of the Ministry of Education
* Source: KSH
Table 6
The status of youth between 15 and 24 in schools and on the labor market, 1992 and 1997
(%)
Total
Age Studies Employed Unemployed Inactive
(in thousands)
1992 1997 1992 1997 1992 1997 1992 1997 1992 1997
15 96,9 97,5 0,5 0,0 0,4 0,1 2,2 2,4 178,5 138,1
16 90,6 95,1 2,7 0,1 2,0 0,4 4,7 4,4 189,9 143,8
17 72,5 92,4 6,1 0,6 4,4 1,7 7,0 5,3 181,7 154,6
18 61,2 78,4 23,5 8,6 8,1 4,0 7,2 9,0 151,2 162,0
19 56,4 56,5 39,4 20,7 10,9 7,2 13,3 15,6 146,9 170,9
15–19 75,8 83,1 16,3 6,3 4,9 2,9 6,6 7,7 848,2 769,4
20 25,6 37,6 46,3 33,0 12,7 8,5 15,4 20,9 142,2 178,1
21 18,0 29,4 57,1 41,6 9,1 8,0 15,8 21,3 143,6 189,4
22 11,8 19,1 60,9 50,6 11,6 9,9 15,7 20,4 144,1 181,2
23 11,3 22,2 62,2 55,8 10,4 6,6 16,1 25,4 144,5 150,8
24 2,1 2,9 66,2 63,8 9,3 6,6 22,4 26,7 138,4 146,4
20–24 15,4 22,0 57,1 47,9 10,7 8,3 16,8 21,9 712,8 845,9
15–24 34,1 36,7 43,3 38,7 8,0 5,8 14,6 18,8 1561,0 1615,3
Source: OECD, 1999a
Table 7
The proportion of individuals not acquiring secondary education in some European countries
– divided by age group, 1997 (%)
Country 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59

Czech Republic 8 9 15 21
Finland 13 16 30 45
Austria 18 19 28 35
Hungary 22 22 30 54
Ireland 27 40 56 99
United Kingdom 37 43 44 53
Portugal 55 71 79 87
EU-average 31 35 42 63
Source: Key data..., 2000
Table 8
The number of local governments performing public educational tasks of different levels,
1994/95 and 1999/00
Category 1994/95 1999/00

The total number of local governments 3147 3153
No educational institutions maintained 704 721
Local governments only maintaining schools operating as sections of
n. a. 69
other institutions
Number of local governments maintaining educational institutions 2443 2432
Local governments maintaining only kindergartens 177 201
Local governments maintaining only primary schools 116 44
Local governments maintaining primary schools and kindergartens 2149 2072
Local governments maintaining schools with at least eight grades 1822 1798
Local governments maintaining secondary schools 223 233
Source: BM data on local governments and OM educational statistics
88
Table 9
The number of local governments performing public educational tasks of different levels according to the size of settlements, 1999/00
Number of local Number of local Number of local

Number of local
Size of population governments Number of local governments (also) governments
Number of local governments
(individuals) maintaining no governments hosting maintaining primary maintaining primary
governments maintaining
1 Jan. 1998 public educational member institutions schools with less schools with at least
* secondary schools**
institutions than eight grades eight grades
below 500 985 724 40 123 32 2
500–999 689 67 27 221 328 6
1 000–1 999 663 2 2 27 625 5
2 000–4 999 517 – – 10 513 28
5 000–9 999 136 – – 22 136 47
10 000–19 999 77 – – 36 78 62
20 000–49 999 45 – – 35 45 42
50 000–99 999 28 – – 25 28 28
100 000–199 999 12 – – 12 12 12
more than 200 000 1 – – 1 1 1
Total 3153 793 69 512 1798 233
Source: Calculations on the basis of BM data and OM educational statistics
*
Six- and eight-grade high schools are indicated amongst primary schools with less than eight grades.
**
Local governments maintaining high schools, vocational secondary schools, vocational training schools and vocational apprentice schools.
Table 10
Budgetary expenditures spent on education from the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by levels of education, 1990–1999 (%)
Level of education 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
3
Kindergarten 0,74 0,79 0,84 0,87 0,88 0,77 0,72 0,76 0,74 0,76
1
Primary education 2,38 2,57 2,69 2,62 2,56 2,13 1,93 3,00 2,90 2,88
Secondary education 1,47 1,57 1,73 1,66 1,54 1,31 1,20
Total amount spent on public education 4,59 4,93 5,26 5,15 4,98 4,21 3,85 3,763 3,64 3,64
Higher education 0,81 0,88 1,06 1,07 1,08 0,96 0,86 0,94 0,90 0,96
Child protection 0,21 0,21 0,20 – – – – – – –
2
Other forms of education 0,28 0,32 0,28 0,32 0,34 0,29 0,27 0,28 0,29 n.d.
4
Total sum spent on education 5,89 6,34 6,80 6,54 6,40 5,46 4,98 4,98 4,83 n.d.
Educational expenditures in the
percentage of the total amount of 9,56 9,62 9,64 8,91 8,36 8,56 8,66 10,0 9,75 n.d.
budgetary expenditures
Source: OM data (1999: preliminary data)
1
Since 1997 the budgetary data of primary and secondary education have been indicated inclusively under the title of school education.
2
Education at universities, colleges, professional training, courses, etc.
3
Since 1997: “operation of institutional assets” with the performance of professional tasks.
4
Preliminary date.
90
Table 11
Budgetary support per student in the percentage of per capita GDP broken down by types of
institutions, 1995–1999
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

Per capita GDP at current prices (Ft) 548 836 676 315 841 099 1 006 575 1 145 253
Per capita budgetary support in the
percentage of per capita GDP
Kindergarten 19,8 18,3 20,2 19,7 20,5
Primary school 21,4 19,2 18,4 17,7 18,4
High school 24,7 21,7 19,8 19,2 20,0
Vocational secondary school 24,7 22,6 20,8 19,4 20,2
Source: For the period between 1995 and 1998 – calculations of Miklós Balogh based on KSH data; 1999: OM
data
Table 12
Educational expenditures of the central budget and local budgets, 1991–1999 (billion Ft)
Expenditures 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999*
The total amount of
educational expenditures of 126 157 186 217 241 268 327 378 428
1
the budget
Expenditures appearing in the
122 151 177 211 235 261 320 366 413
budget of local governments
Freely usable normative
71 84 95 93 94 135 163 180 211
support
Centralized support and
– 0,5 0,5 0,5 1,3 3,5** 14,7 19,1 19,8
support of fixed utilization2
The proportion of centralized
support and support of fixed
utilization compared to the
0,0 0,4 0,3 0,2 0,6 1,3 4,6 5,2 4,8
total amount of educational
expenditures of local
governments (%)
The aggregate proportion of
support compared to the total
amount of educational 58,5 56,2 53,9 44,3 40,6 53,1 55,5 54,4 56,0
expenditures of local
governments (%)
The rate of growth of
expenditures (previous year = 128,5 125,4 117,9 116,7 109,2 111,4 124,1 115,6 113,2
100%)
Consumers’ price index
135 123 122,5 118,8 128,2 123,6 118,3 114,3 110,0
(previous year = %)
Source: OM data; acts on the implementation of budgetary laws
*
Preliminary data (calculations of László Limbacher).
**
There was additionally a centralized appropriation of wage policy measures in 1996.
1
On the basis of financial reports of local governmental and central budgetary institutions, not including data of
private education. Not including tasks related to career counseling, methodology and other fields. Does not
include basic arts education until 1994.
2
Not including appropriations of the OM which are treated within the chapters, since public educational
institutions only constitute a group of direct users of these sources.
Table 13
The proportion of educational expenses within the total expenditure of local governments,
1994–1999 (%)
Expenditures 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

Current 71,0 73,0 71,1 67,0 67,5 70,4
expenditures
Of this: on 26,9 26,9 26,2 24,4 24,6 25,5
education
Developmental 19,5 14,4 15,3 18,0 20,1 17,1
expenditures
Of this: on 2,8 1,8 2,0 1,9 1,9 1,8
education
Other expenditures 9,5 12,6 13,6 15,0 12,4 12,5
Total 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0 100,0
Source: PM data
Table 14
The changes in the number of children in kindergarten and students receiving standard
(daytime) education
Students in Students in
Children in Students in
Year primary higher
kindergarten secondary education
education education
1990 391129 1167398 517358 76601
1991 394091 1117613 535213 83191
1992 394420 1079639 539645 92328
1993 397153 1044919 535184 103713
1994 396184 1021441 528838 116370
1995 399339 1012068 527265 129541
1996 394327 1003736 525165 142113
1997 383486 1002289 517816 152889
1998 374867 1004167 509249 163100
Source: Educational statistics and statistical announcements of the Ministry of Education
92
Table 15
The most important index numbers of kindergartens, 1990/91–1999/00
1990=
Category 1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00
100%
Proportion of children attending
kindergarten compared to the totality of 85,5 85,9 86,5 86,6 86,3 87,2 86,6 86,3 86,5 87,3 101,2
the population aged 3–5, % (KSH)
The percentage of children attending

kindergarten compared to the number
n. d.* n. d. n. d. n. d. n. d. n. d. 91,0 90,9 91,4 92,0 –
of children of kindergarten age, % (OM
data)
Number of kindergartens 4 718 4 706 4 730 4 712 4 719 4 720 4 708 4 682 4 701 4 643 99,6
Number of places (in thousands) 385,0 378,7 378,7 376,0 376,4 373,2 371,4 370,2 369,5 366,2 96,0
Number of teachers (individuals) 33 635 33 159 33 140 32 957 33 007 32 320 31 891 31 848 31 986 31 409 95,1
Number of children attending
391,1 394,1 394,4 397,2 396,2 399,3 394,3 383,5 374,9 365,7 95,9
kindergarten (in thousands)
Number of children per 100 places 102 104 104 106 105 107 106 104 101 99,9 99,0
Number of groups 16 055 15 982 16 009 15 952 16 072 15 813 15 701 15 641 15 630 15 336 97,4
Number of children per group 24,4 24,7 24,6 24,9 24,7 25,3 25,1 24,5 24,0 23,8 98,4
Number of children per teacher 11,6 11,9 11,9 12,0 12,0 12,4 12,4 12,0 10,9 11,6 94,0
Source: Statistical data and statistical announcements of the Ministry of Education, KSH data
*n.d. = no data
Table 16
Basic data of primary school education, 1985/86–1999/00
School year School Classroom Class Teacher Student

1985/86 3 546 43 800 48 610 88 066 1 297 818
1986/87 3 540 44 597 49 213 89 611 1 299 455
1987/88 3 540 45 409 49 622 90 925 1 277 257
1988/89 3 526 46 045 49 509 90 620 1 242 672
1989/90 3 527 46 146 49 112 90 602 1 183 573
1990/91 3 548 46 580 48 729 90 511 1 130 656
1991/92 3 641 47 121 48 497 89 276 1 081 213
1992/93 3 717 47 594 48 330 88 917 1 044 164
1993/94 3 771 48 148 47 676 89 655 1 009 416
1994/95 3 814 48 677 47 578 89 939 985 291
1995/96 3 809 48 615 46 425 86 891 974 806
1996/97 3 765 48 231 45 521 83 658 965 998
1997/98 3 800 48 592 45 495 82 904 963 997
1998/99 3 732 48 981 45 589 83 404 964 248
1999/00 3 696 48 930 44 956 82 829 960 601
Source: 20HGXFDWLRQDOVWDWLVWLFV.6+2NWDWiVLDGDWRN HO]HWHVDGDWRN
Table 17
Per unit indexes of primary schools, 1985/86–1999/00
Students per
Number of
Students per Students per Students per Students per teacher not
School year classes per
school classroom class teacher including day
classroom
care teachers
1985/86 366,0 29,6 26,7 14,7 n. a. 1,11
1986/87 367,1 29,1 26,4 14,5 n. a. 1,10
1987/88 360,8 28,1 25,7 14,0 n. a. 1,09
1988/89 352,4 27,0 25,1 13,7 n. a. 1,08
1989/90 335,6 25,6 24,1 13,1 n. a. 1,06
1990/91 318,7 24,3 23,2 12,5 15,3 1,05
1991/92 297,0 22,9 22,3 12,1 14,8 1,03
1992/93 280,9 21,9 21,6 11,7 14,2 1,02
1993/94 267,7 21,0 21,2 11,3 13,5 0,99
1994/95 258,3 20,3 20,7 11,0 13,1 0,98
1995/96 255,9 20,1 21,0 11,2 13,2 0,96
1996/97 256,6 20,0 21,2 11,5 13,5 0,94
1997/98 257,1 19,8 21,2 11,6 13,6 0,94
1998/99 258,4 19,7 21,2 11,6 13,6 0,93
1999/00 259,9 19,6 21,4 11,6 13,6 1,08
Source: OM statistical data; 1999/00: calculations by Erika Garami
Table 18
Primary schools according to the number and proportion of students and teachers and
according to maintainers - 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999
School School Student Student Teacher Teacher Student/

Maintainer Year
(pc) (%) (person) (%) (person) (%) teacher
1993 3 574 94,8 969 409 96,0 86 000 95,9 11,3
1996 3 470 92,2 908 164 94,0 78 490 93,8 11,6
Local
1997 3 432 91,5 900 291 93,4 77 280 93,2 11,7
government
1998 3399 91,0 897 133 93,0 77 361 92,8 11,6
1999 3 343 90,0 889 254 93,0 76 526 92,0 12,0
1993 49 1,3 4 841 0,5 486 0,5 10,0
1996 60 1,6 6 582 1,7 553 0,7 11,9
County self-
1997 57 2,0 6 853 1,0 563 1,0 12,0
government
1998 56 1,5 7 081 0,7 596 0,7 11,9
1999 58 2,0 7 377 1,0 542 1,0 14,0
1993 30 0,8 13 210 1,3 1 332 1,5 9,9
1996 30 0,8 12 413 1,3 1 191 1,4 10,4
Central
1997 33 1,0 13 091 1,0 1 227 2,0 10,7
budget
1998 33 0,8 13 104 1,4 1 230 1,5 10,7
1999 31 0,8 12 757 1,3 1 216 1,5 11,0
1993 94 2,5 19 449 1,9 1 521 1,7 12,8
1996 145 3,9 32 486 3,4 2 643 3,2 12,3
Denominati
1997 162 4,3 37 044 3,8 3 030 4,0 12,0
on
1998 168 4,5 39 078 4,0 3 261 3,9 12,0
1999 177 5,0 42 270 4,0 3 479 4,0 12,2
1993 21 0,6 2 212 0,2 283 0,3 7,9
Foundation, 1996 56 1,5 5 907 0,6 731 0,9 8,1
private 1997 52 1,4 4 849 0,5 632 0,8 7,7
person 1998 65 1,7 6 351 0,7 815 1,0 7,8
1999 75 2,0 7 470 0,8 919 1,1 8,1
1993 3 0,0 295 0,0 33 0,0 8,9
1996 4 0,0 446 0,0 50 0,0 8,9
Other (e.g.
1997 14 0,4 1 869 0,2 172 0,2 10,9
company)
1998 11 0,3 1 501 0,2 141 0,2 10,6
1999 12 0,3 1 473 0,2 147 0,2 10,0
1993 3771 100,0 1 009 416 100,0 89 655 100,0 11,3
1996 3765 100,0 965 998 100,0 83 658 100,0 11,5
Total 1997 3 800 100,0 963 997 100,0 82 904 100,0 11,6
1998 3 732 100,0 964 248 100,0 83 404 100,0 11,6
1999 3 696 100,0 960 601 100,0 82 829 100,0 11,6
Source: Statistics and statistical announcements of the Ministry of Education, KSH data, calculations by Erika
Garami and Judit Lannert
95
Table 19
Students accomplishing primary studies until reaching the end of school age in proportion to
the total population aged 16, 1990/91–1999/00 (%) (data from the end of previous school
years)
School Students dropping out with

until 14 until 15 until 16 Total
year less than 8 grades (person)
1990/91 81,4 9,3 3,2 93,9 10 300
1991/92 81,0 9,4 3,1 93,5 12 400
1992/93 81,5 9,7 3,3 94,5 10 000
1993/94 81,4 10,7 4,0 96,1 6 800
1994/95 79,9 12,0 4,1 96,0 6 600
1995/96 79,7 12,7 4,4 96,8 5 000
1996/97 78,3 13,7 4,5 96,5 5 200
1997/98 76,7 13,9 4,6 95,2 5 000
1998/99 80,6 12,1 3,5 96,2 5 100
1999/00 79,0 14,9 3,9 97,8 5-6 000*
Source: KSH, Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyv 1998; OM educational statistics; 1999/00: calculations by Tibor
Könyvesi
*
Estimated date, OM.
Table 20
Dropout rates for the emphatic grades of primary school and in total, between 1990/91 and
1999/00 (%) (data from the end of the previous school year)
Dropout rate in grades compared

School Dropout rate at Dropout rate at Dropout rate in to the number of students
year grade 4 grade 8 total entering education 8 years
earlier
1990/91 2,8 1,1 3,4 12,3
1993/94 2,0 1,2 2,8 11,4
1996/97 1,8 0,9 2,6 9,2
1997/98 1,8 0,9 2,5 9,6
1999/00 1,7 0,9 2,4 9,9
Source: OM educational statistics; 1999/00: calculations by Tibor Könyvesi
96
Table 21
The number of students completing primary school and the proportion of students pursuing further studies, 1985/86–1999/00
Vocational Vocational Special Total number
Students Vocational Vocational training training vocational of students
High school,
School year completing 8 secondary apprentice school for school for training school pursuing
%
grades (person) school, % school, % shorthand- health for normal further
typing, % education, % students, % studies, %
1985/86 130 992 20,8 26,0 43,8 1,4 1,4 – 93,6
1986/87 131 219 20,7 27,0 43,5 1,7 1,3 – 94,2
1987/88 134 223 21,1 26,7 44,2 1,4 1,4 – 94,8
1988/89 149 640 20,1 27,4 44,5 1,6 1,4 – 95,0
1989/90 170 891 20,4 27,0 42,7 1,7 1,5 – 93,3
1990/91 164 616 21,1 27,5 42,0 1,6 1,3 n. d. 93,4
1991/92 158 912 21,6 28,9 39,2 1,3 0,9 n. d. 91,9
1992/93 151 295 23,3 30,1 36,6 1,0 0,8 3,9 95,7
1993/94 144 203 24,2 31,8 35,5 0,9 0,6 4,5 97,5
1994/95 136 900 25,7 32,6 35,2 5,3 98,8
1995/96 122 359 27,1 33,7 34,2 4,3 99,3
1996/97 120 561 27,2 34,4 31,9 3,6 97,1
1997/98 116 711 29,0 35,5 30,8 2,6 97,9
1998/99 113 654 30,7 38,0 24,6 2,5 95,8
1999/00 114 302 31,6 39,0 22,9 2,4 95,9
Source: 20HGXFDWLRQDOVWDWLVWLFV.6+2NWDWiVLDGDWRN HO]HWes adatok) 1999/2000
Table 22
Number of students admitted to secondary schools, 1985/86–1999/00
Vocational
School year High school secondary Total
school
1985/86 27 246 34 058 61 304
1986/87 27 162 35 429 62 591
1987/88 28 321 35 838 64 159
1988/89 30 078 41 001 71 079
1989/90 34 862 46 141 81 003
1990/91 34 734 45 269 80 003
1991/92 34 325 45 926 80 251
1992/93 35 252 45 540 80 792
1993/94 34 897 45 857 80 754
1994/95 35 183 44 629 79 812
1995/96 33 159 41 235 74 394
1996/97 32 793 41 835 74 628
1997/98 33 845 41 431 75 276
1998/99 34 891 43 187 78 078
1999/00 36 119 44 578 80 697
Table 23
Number of students in secondary education divided by programs, 1985/86–1999/00
Vocational Vocational Special vocational

School Vocational Vocational
High school training school for training school for training school for Total
year secondary school apprentice school
shorthand-typing, health education normal students
1985/86 105 794 130 155 176 380 7 751 5 491 – 425 571
1986/87 105 194 131 517 175 228 7 744 5 279 – 424 932
1987/88 105 976 133 618 177 191 7 378 5 414 – 429 577
1988/89 108 440 139 740 186 796 7 343 5 645 – 447 964
1989/90 116 317 157 075 201 702 6 794 6 531 – 488 419
1990/91 123 425 168 352 209 371 6 231 6 549 684 514 612
1991/92 130 378 178 911 204 655 5 404 6 261 6 062 531 671
1992/93 136 729 186 183 188 570 4 281 5 158 14 284 535 205
1993/94 138 198 192 388 174 187 3 494 4 224 17 298 529 789
1994/95 140 352 196 965 163 330 3 017 3 290 16 338 523 292
1995/96 140 884 208 415 154 294 2 267 2 054 13 984 521 898
1996/97 140 867 220 528 143 800 1 870 1 067 11 624 519 756
1997/98 141 402 227 243 132 637 1 238 726 9 310 512 556
1998/99 142 196 234 430 119 727 863 368 7 245 504 829
1999/00 145 210 241 369 109 534 651 327 6 526 503 617
Table 24
Number of classes in secondary education divided by programs, 1985/86–1999/00

shorthand-typing health education normal students
1985/86 3 331 4 101 6 309 276 160 – 14 177
1986/87 3 379 4 187 6 312 275 158 – 14 311
1987/88 3 463 4 312 6 367 268 162 – 14 572
1988/89 3 568 4 515 6 564 266 169 – 15 082
1989/90 3 793 5 037 6 909 242 191 – 16 172
1990/91 3 988 5 452 7 199 220 196 23 17 078
1991/92 4 211 5 874 7 036 201 195 238 17 755
1992/93 4 409 6 201 6 648 161 166 589 18 174
1993/94 4 476 6 497 6 182 131 134 747 18 167
1994/95 4 579 6 771 5 824 125 115 743 18 157
1995/96 4 662 7 292 5 490 103 72 644 18 263
1996/97 4 800 7 720 5 088 81 41 533 18 213
1997/98 4 866 8 016 4 767 54 31 478 18 212
1998/99 4 956 9 355 4 044 35 16 339 18 745
1999/00 5 064 8 671 4 012 26 14 313 18 100
100
Table 25
The number of teachers employed in secondary education divided by programs, 1985/86–1999/00

1985/86 7 923 9 976 11 505 236 385 – 30 025
1986/87 8 286 10 241 11 591 253 383 – 30 754
1987/88 8 646 10 538 11 651 258 404 – 31 497
1988/89 9 103 10 981 11 745 288 434 – 32 551
1989/90 9 656 11 769 12 044 303 504 – 34 276
1990/91 10 246 12 656 12 060 221 498 n. a. 35 681
1991/92 10 732 13 285 11 766 215 441 261 36 700
1992/93 11 290 13 983 11 451 181 369 505 37 779
1993/94 11 959 14 862 11 251 173 325 760 39 330
1994/95 12 578 15 338 10 939 153 281 871 40 160
1995/96 12 912 15 772 10 284 136 183 796 40 083
1996/97 13 133 16 329 9 223 126 109 706 39 626
1997/98 13 451 16 829 8 641 76 45 577 39 619
1998/99 13 786 17 567 8 213 62 24 478 40 130
1999/00 14 155 18 162 7 919 32 20 379 40 667
101
Table 26
Number of students per class and teacher in secondary education divided by programs, 1985/86–1999/00

Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/ Stud/
class teach class teach class teach class teach class teach class teach class teach
1985/86 31,8 13,4 31,7 13,0 28,0 15,3 28,1 32,8 34,3 14,3 – – 30,0 14,2
1986/87 31,1 12,7 31,4 12,8 27,8 15,1 28,2 30,6 33,4 13,8 – – 29,7 13,8
1987/88 30,6 12,6 31,0 12,7 27,8 15,2 27,6 28,6 33,4 13,4 – – 29,2 13,6
1988/89 30,4 11,9 31,0 12,7 28,5 15,9 27,6 25,5 33,4 13,0 – – 29,4 13,8
1989/90 30,7 12,0 31,2 13,3 29,2 16,7 28,1 22,4 34,2 13,0 – – 29,8 14,2
1990/91 30,9 12,0 30,9 13,3 29,1 17,4 28,3 28,2 33,4 13,2 29,7 n. a. 29,8 14,4
1991/92 31,0 12,1 30,5 13,5 29,1 17,4 26,9 25,1 32,1 14,2 25,5 23,2 29,5 14,5
1992/93 31,0 12,1 30,0 13,3 28,4 16,5 26,6 23,7 31,1 14,0 24,3 28,3 29,4 14,2
1993/94 30,9 11,6 29,6 12,9 28,2 15,5 26,7 20,2 31,5 13,0 23,2 22,8 29,1 13,5
1994/95 30,7 11,2 29,0 12,8 28,0 14,9 24,1 19,7 28,6 11,7 22,0 18,8 28,8 13,0
1995/96 30,2 10,9 28,6 13,2 28,1 15,0 23,4 16,7 28,5 11,2 21,7 17,6 28,6 13,0
1996/97 29,7 10,7 28,6 13,5 28,3 15,6 23,1 14,8 26,0 9,8 21,8 16,5 28,5 13,1
1997/98 29,1 10,5 28,3 13,5 27,8 15,4 22,9 16,3 23,4 16,1 19,5 16,1 28,1 12,9
1998/99 28,7 10,3 28,1 13,3 27,6 14,6 24,7 13,9 23,0 15,3 21,3 15,2 28,0 12,6
1999/00 28,7 10,3 27,8 13,3 27,3 13,8 25,0 20,3 23,4 16,4 20,8 17,2 27,8 12,4
Source: OM educational statistics; 1999/00: calculations by Erika Garami
102
Table 27
Basic data of secondary schools divided by maintainers, 1991-1999
School School Student Student Teacher Teacher Student/

Maintainer Year
(pc) (%) (person) (%) (person) (%) teacher
1991 596 76,4 238067 77,0 n.d. n.d. n.d.
1993 605 69,9 240459 72,7 19374 72,2 12,4
1994 606 68,3 237979 70,6 19533 69,9 12,2
Local 1995 605 64,6 235739 67,5 19320 67,4 12,2
government 1996 591 60,3 233532 64,6 18939 64,3 12,3
1997 597 60,4 238202 64,6 19332 63,8 12,3
1998 609 58,8 241190 64,0 19759 63,0 12,2
1999 575 54,6 237483 61,4 19475 60,3 12,2
1991 133 17,0 56722 18,3 n.d. n.d. n.d.
1993 172 19,9 65897 19,9 5154 19,2 12,8
1994 175 19,7 69697 20,7 5544 19,8 12,6
County self- 1995 193 20,6 77926 22,3 6048 21,1 12,9
government 1996 216 22,0 87143 24,1 6791 23,0 12,8
1997 207 21,0 86566 23,5 6875 22,7 12,6
1998 207 20,0 86781 23,0 6842 21,8 12,7
1999 233 22,1 94651 24,5 7624 23,6 12,4
1991 17 2,2 6627 2,1 n.d. n.d. n.d.
1993 24 2,8 7709 2,3 833 3,1 9,3
1994 28 3,2 7963 2,4 898 3,2 8,9
Central 1995 34 3,6 9781 2,8 1039 3,6 9,4
budget 1996 38 3,9 11089 3,1 1202 4,1 9,2
1997 36 3,6 10622 2,9 1191 3,9 8,9
1998 39 3,8 11036 2,9 1400 4,5 7,9
1999 37 3,5 11247 2,9 1421 4,4 7,9
1991 22 2,8 6277 2,0 n.d. n.d. n.d.
1993 42 4,8 11875 3,6 1002 3,7 11,9
1994 48 5,4 14164 4,2 1277 4,6 11,1
Denominati 1995 52 5,6 15257 4,3 1467 5,1 10,4
on 1996 63 6,4 17153 4,7 1709 5,8 10,0
1997 68 6,9 19156 5,2 1922 6,3 10,0
1998 77 7,4 19987 5,3 2093 6,7 9,5
1999 87 8,3 21523 5,6 2365 7,3 9,1
1991 10 1,3 1104 0,4 n.d. n.d. n.d.
1993 18 2,1 2728 0,8 297 1,1 9,2
1994 25 2,8 3728 1,1 573 2,0 6,5
Foundation,
1995 49 5,2 9478 2,7 708 2,5 13,4
private
1996 65 6,6 10983 3,0 711 2,4 15,4
person
1997 69 7,0 11702 3,2 743 2,5 15,7
1998 87 8,4 14737 3,9 1020 3,3 14,5
1999 100 9,5 17811 4,6 1213 3,8 14,7
1991 2 0,3 554 0,2 n.d. n.d. n.d.

1993 5 0,6 1918 0,6 161 0,6 11,9
1994 5 0,6 1062 0,3 111 0,4 9,6
Other (e.g. 1995 3 0,3 1118 0,3 102 0,4 11,0
company) 1996 7 0,7 1495 0,4 110 0,4 13,6
1997 12 1,2 2397 0,7 217 0,7 11,0
1998 17 1,6 2895 0,8 239 0,8 12,1
1999 22 2,1 3864 1,0 219 0,7 17,6
1991 780 100,0 309351 100,0 n.d. n.d. n.d.
1993 866 100,0 330586 100,0 26821 100,0 12,3
1994 887 100,0 337317 100,0 27936 100,0 12,1
1995 936 100,0 349299 100,0 28684 100,0 12,2
Total
1996 980 100,0 361395 100,0 29462 100,0 12,3
1997 989 100,0 368645 100,0 30280 100,0 12,2
1998 1036 100,0v 376626 100,0v 31353 100,0v 12,0
1999 1054 100,0 386579 100,0 32317 100,0 12,0
Source: calculations of Erika Garami based on OM educational statistics
104
Table 28
Number of students studying at grades 13–15, 1995/1996, 1996/1997 and 1999/2000
Level of education,
13. 14-15. Total 13. 14-15. Total 13. 14–15. Total
type of school
High school ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 815 – 815
Vocational training school for health
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- – – –
education
Vocational training school for
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 116 34 150
shorthand-typing
Other vocational training schools ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 388 185 573
Vocational apprentice school (with
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 3 482 3 207 6 689
primary qualification)
Vocational secondary school ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 36 965 13 234 50 199
As education following the matriculation exam
vocational apprentice school 4782 4124 8906 4350 4534 8884 ---- ---- ----
vocational secondary school grades
22307 1825 24132 28536 4735 33271 ---- ---- ----
V-VI
Vocational training in total 27089 5949 33038 32886 9269 42155 40 951 16 660 57 611
Total 27089 5949 33038 32886 9269 42155 41 766 16 660 58 426
Source:.6+.|]RNWDWiVpVIHOVRNWDWiVWDQpY.6+2NWDWiVLDGDWRN HO]HWHVDGDWRN
Table 29
Summary data of students completing the matriculation exam and entering higher education, 1990–1999 (in thousands)
Category 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
High school (standard daytime
24,1 24,6 26,7 31,1 31,0 31,2 32,1 32,7 33,7 32,0
education)
In high school in total 27,2 27,5 29,3 34,2 34,4 34,6 41,4 36,4 37,7 36,3
Vocational secondary school
28,9 29,6 33,0 37,6 37,6 39,1 41,3 42,9 43,9 41,9
(standard daytime education)
In vocational secondary schools in
40,6 41,0 42,2 46,3 45,8 49,9 51,5 53,8 53,3 50,4
total
Standard daytime education in total 53,0 54,2 59,6 68,6 68,6 70,3 73,4 75,6 77,7 74,0
In proportion to the population aged
18 and possessing a matriculation 36,9 35,9 32,8 36,2 37,9 40,4 44,5 48,7 52,7 53,6
exam (%)
Students applying for standard
46,8 48,9 59,1 71,5 79,4 86,5 79,4 81,9 81,1 85,5
(daytime) higher education
Students admitted to institutions of
16,8 20,3 24,0 28,0 29,8 35,1 38,4 40,9 43,6 44,5
higher education
Students admitted in proportion to
36,0 41,6 40,6 39,2 37,5 40,5 50 50 53,8 52,1
students applying (%)
Students admitted in proportion to
students acquiring a matriculation
31,7 37,5 40,3 40,8 43,4 50 52,3 54,1 56,2 60,2
exam in standard (daytime) secondary
education (%)
Students in standard (daytime) higher
education in proportion to the 10,4 11,4 12,0 12,8 14 15 16,1 16,1 19,9 17,4
population aged 18-22 (%)
Source: KSH, Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyv. 1990–20HGXFDWLRQDOVWDWLVWLFV.6+2NWDWiVLDGDWRN HO]HWHVDGDWRN
106
Table 30
Primary school classes and numbers of students of 6- and 8-grade high schools,
1991/92–1999/00
Number of
Category Number of students Number of classes
schools
5. 6. 7. 8. Total 5. 6. 7. 8. Total
1991/92
6 grades 21 – – . . . . . . . .
8 grades 45 . . . . . . . . . .
Total – 1621 538 1186 416 3761 55 18 39 13 125
1992/93
6 grades 54 – – 2254 1089 3343 – – 74 29 103
8 grades 47 1746 1341 533 113 3733 60 48 18 4 130
Total – 1746 1341 2787 1202 7076 60 48 92 33 233
1993/94
6 grades 86 – – 3317 1978 5295 – – 113 66 179
8 grades 68 2669 1966 1463 572 6670 91 69 49 20 229
Total – 2669 1966 4780 2550 11965 91 69 162 86 408
1994/95
6 grades 126 – – 4800 3606 8406 – – 168 124 292
8 grades 88 3363 3004 2248 1584 10199 120 103 79 54 356
Total – 3363 3004 7048 5190 18605 120 103 267 178 648
107
1995/96
6 grades 150 – – 5717 5138 10855 – – 196 179 375
8 grades 97 3727 3461 3058 2218 12464 128 123 105 78 434
Total – 3727 3461 8775 7356 23319 128 123 301 257 809
1996/97
6 grades 168 – – 6110 5697 11807 – – 210 195 405
8 grades 99 4029 3800 3506 3030 14315 136 128 123 105 492
Total – 4029 3800 9616 8727 26122 136 128 333 300 897
1997/98
6 grades 173 – – 6392 6073 12465 – – 225 210 435
8 grades 103 3854 4094 3766 3526 15240 135 138 128 125 526
Total – 3854 4094 10158 9599 27705 135 138 353 335 961
1998/99
6 grades 188 – – 7242 6580 13822 – – 253 232 485
8 grades 106 4033 3913 4051 3754 15751 140 137 138 131 546
Total – 4033 3913 11293 10334 29573 140 137 391 363 1031
1999/00
6 grades 191 – – 7015 7346 14361 – – 243 254 497
8 grades 106 3986 4038 3869 4028 15921 138 139 135 138 550
Total – 3986 4038 10884 11374 30282 138 139 378 392 1047
Source: OM educational statistics; data calculated by Tibor Könyvesi for the 1999/00 school year
108
Table 31
Basic data of vocational apprentice schools between 1990/19991 and 1999/2000
Proportion of students in
School Students (standard Student/ percentage of the
Schools Teachers
year daytime education) teacher population of the same
age
1990/91 308 209371 12060 17,4 39,0
1991/92 317 204655 11766 17,4 35,7
1992/93 329 188570 11451 16,5 34,7*
1993/94 332 174187 11251 15,5 33,6
1994/95 335 163330 10961 14,9 33,1
1995/96 349 154294 10284 15,0 35,7
1996/97 363 143846 9223 15,6 35,0
1997/98 359 132637 8641 15,3 34,2
1998/99 362 119727 8213 14,6 31,4
1999/00 356 109534 7919 13,8 20,0**
Source: 20 6WDWLV]WLNDL WiMpNR]WDWy 0&YHOGpVL pYN|Q\Y , 2NWDWiV 20 6WDWLV]WLNDL WiMpNR]WDWy
0&YHOGpVL pYN|Q\Y , 2NWDWiV 20 6WDWLV]WLNDL WiMpNR]WDWy 2NWDWiVL pYN|Q\Y .6+ 2NWDWiVL
DGDWRN HO]HWHVDGDWRN
* Since 1992/93 students accomplishing primary school amongst the 14-16 age group
** Students of vocational apprentice and vocational training schools from among the 14-17 age group
Table 32
Number of students participating in standard (daytime) professional education based on
matriculation exams divided by professional orientation, for 1998/99 and in total, for 1999/00
Professional Total number of Students receiving Students taking

orientation students OKJ education professional exams
Technical,
12 515 4 247 1 959
architectural
Economic 11 478 10 872 3 580
Service 5 447 4 077 1 732
Other 5 007 4 912 539
Health-related 4 321 4 277 1 617
Computer-related 4 251 4 179 646
Agricultural 2 037 1 006 470
Related to
transportation and 851 349 153
telecommunication
Industrial 323 295 –
Total 46 230 34 214 10 696
Total in 1999/00 51 014 40 367 27 838
Source:.6+0DJ\DU6WDWLV]WLNDL=VHEN|Q\Y .6+2NWDWiVLDGDWRN HO]HWHVDGDWRN
Table 33
Dropout rates in secondary education compared to the number of students at start,
1990/91–1998/99 (%)
Vocational Vocational apprentice and

School year High school
secondary school training school
1990/91 11,9 16,7 23,0
1991/92 11,2 17,2 22,8
1992/93 11,5 15,8 22,9
1993/94 10,4 15,2 21,1
1994/95 9,3 15,3 20,9
1995/96 10,1 11,1 20,4
1996/97 9,3 8,7 23,0
1997/98 9,1 4,0 25,7
1998/99 8,5 3,0 31,6
Source: Szakképzés Magyarországon..., 1997; OM educational statistics; 1998/99: calculations by Erika Garami
and Tibor Könyvesi
Table 34
Number of students in night schools and correspondence sections of secondary schools for
adults, between 1990/91 and 1999/00
Vocational secondary school

School year High school students students and students of Total
technology
1990/91 18820 49366 68186
1991/92 22912 46292 69204
1992/93 21509 48794 70303
1993/94 22588 53747 76335
1994/95 23491 57713 81204
1995/96 22468 53423 75891
1996/97 22974 51679 74653
1997/98 25734 52558 78292
1998/99 30033 54829 84862
1999/00 33078 55384 88462
Source: OM educational statistics
110
Table 35
Number of students graduating from adult education in proportion to all graduates, between
1960 and 1995 (%)
Students Students passing Students passing Students graduating

Year accomplishing 8 vocational matriculation exam or from higher
grades apprentice exam certification exam education
1960 22,7 41,8 22,9 41,7
1970 4,9 18,4 33,6 44,9
1980 5,2 30,6 71,1 69,4
1990 2,1 10,4 26,3 43,7
1995 1,7 10,1 19,8 31,0
Source: Átmenet..., 1999
Table 36
Data of institutions providing special needs education, 1990/91, 1996/97–1998/99
Category 1990/91 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99

Independent institution 175 200 202 199
Section operating in primary school 440 469 476 481
Classroom 3 262 3 550 3 475 3 730
Teacher 6 163 6 517 6 744 7 031
Of these: with special qualification for
3 948 4 062 4 132 4 256
special needs education
Children 39 393 43 101 43 552 44 339
Of these:
In kindergarten 821 1 191 1 183 1 268
In primary school 35 921 36 547 37 109 38 651
In secondary school 2 651 5 363 5 260 4 420
Placed in student hostel of an institution
9 891 9 299 7 716 8 020
of special needs education
Student per teacher 6,4 6,6 6,5 6,3
Student per classroom 12,1 12,1 12,5 11,9
Source: KSH, Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyv 1998
111
Table 37
Main indexes of higher education, 1990/91–1999/00
Category 1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00
Institutions (pc) 77 77 91 91 91 90 89 90 89 89
Professors (person) 17 302 17477 17743 18687 19103 18098 19 329 19 716 21 323 21 138
Students in standard
(daytime) education 76,6 83,2 92,3 103,7 116,4 129,5 142,1 152,9 163,2 171,5
(in thousands)
Freshmen (in
22,7 25,4 30,2 35,0 37,9 42,4 44,7 45,7 48,9 51,6
thousands)
Foreigners (in
3,3 5,8 6,2 6,3 6,4 6,3 6,4 6,6 7,0 7,7
thousands)
From amongst
students in proportion
to the total number of
students (%)…
Students receiving a
scholarship or other 98,9 98,6 99,1 99,1 97,7 98,7 99,2 97,2 96,3 n. a.
support
Students living in
46,8 43,7 41,4 39,8 36,7 33,5 32,1 29,5 28,0 26,5
student hostels
Students per professor
4,4 4,8 5,2 5,5 6,1 7,2 7,3 7,8 7,7 8,1
(person)
Graduating students
15 963 16458 16201 16223 18041 20024 22 147 24411 25 338 27 000*
(person)
Source:.6+0DJ\DU6WDWLV]WLNDL=VHEN|Q\Y¶¶.6+2NWDWiVLDGDWRN HO]HWHVDGatok) 1999/2000;
OM educational statistics
*
Estimated data.
Table 38
The number of students of institutions of higher education according to sections, 1986/87–
1999/00
Standard Correspondenc
School year Night school Total
(daytime) e
1986/87 64 855 6 040 27 610 98 505
1987/88 66 697 5 851 26 477 99 025
1988/89 71 689 5 540 25 812 103 041
1989/90 72 381 5 255 23 232 100 868
1990/91 76 601 4 737 21 049 102 387
1991/92 83 191 4 372 19 516 107 079
1992/93 92 328 4 298 20 834 117 460
1993/94 103 713 4 640 25 603 133 956
1994/95 116 370 5 453 32 837 154 660
1995/96 129 541 5 764 44 260 179 565
1996/97 142 113 5 800 51 169 199 032
1997/98 152 889 6 866 88 349 248 104
1999/00 171 516 7 825 99 889 279 230
Table 39
Proportion of students participating in higher education in OECD countries and Hungary,
divided by age groups, 1996 (%)
Age group OECD-average Hungary
aged 18–21 23,2 (15,2) 13,4
aged 22–25 16,9 (13,0) 9,0
aged 26–29 6,8 (5,1) 2,8
Source: Education at a Glance, 1998
Note: the proportion of students participating in university and college education are indicated in brackets
Table 40
The changes of the number of students participating in higher education and the rate of
completion in some OECD countries
Changes of numbers of
Completion rate, 1995,
Country participants 1990-1997
1996 (%)
(1990 = 100%)
Australia 134 65
Austria 121 53
Czech Republic 161 79
Denmark 124 67
United Kingdom 188 81
Finland 138 75
France 130 55
the Netherlands 105 70
Ireland 158 77
Hungary 205 68
Germany 106 72
Italy 135 35
Portugal 268 49
Switzerland 113 74
Turkey 196 55
USA 106 63
Table 41
Rates of admission in different types of schools in the average of years 1994–1998
Number of students
Number of 4th Number of students admitted/
Type of school
graders (seniors) admitted Number of 4th
graders
High schools 98 951 47 403 47,9
Mixed secondary
70 024 18 629 26,6
schools
Vocational secondary
134 151 22 869 17,0
schools
Total 303 126 88 901 29,3
Source: Neuwirth, 1999b
114
Table 42
Numbers of teachers and students in schools operated by foundations and other maintainers, 1992/93– 1999/00
Category 1992/93 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00

Institutions
Kindergarten 26 43 94 115 121 155 172
Primary school 25 33 47 60 66 76 87
Institution for special
2 6 6 8 10 12 13
needs education
Vocational training
8 11 15 14 15 16 19
school
Vocational apprentice
13 14 18 26 24 28 26
school
Secondary school 19 30 52 72 89 111 133
Of these: high school 13 13 24 26 33 35 36
University, college 3 4 4 5 6 6 6
Students
Kindergarten 964 2 881 5 410 5 986 5 905 6 695 7 080
Primary school 2 500 3 299 4 126 6 353 6 718 7 852 8 943
Institution for special needs
264 484 591 575 615 834 950
education
Vocational training school 1 107 1 044 1 136 764 1 392 1 175 1 375
952 1 547 1 886 3 001 3 155 3 916 3 832
school
Secondary school 2 393 7 514 10 596 12 478 14 099 17 632 21 675
Of these: high school 1 115 2 110 2 213 2 276 2 704 3 092 3 497
University, college 231 2 789 5 247 6 722 6 826 7 384 7 582

Teachers
Kindergarten 103 276 546 606 614 724 748
Primary school 290 406 550 781 804 956 1066
122 175 160 260 278 300 305
education
Vocational training school 19 23 24 25 42 46 57
71 70 126 175 171 194 169
school
Secondary school 268 604 810 821 960 1259 1432
Of these: high school 129 243 309 279 373 428 500
University, college 39 658 775 1381 1467 1592 1675
Source: KSH, Magyar Statisztikai Zsebkönyv ’96, ’98; OM educational statistics 1998/99, 1999/00 and information provided by Mrs. László Szalay
Table 43
Basic data of denominational institution, 1992/93–1999/00
Growth
1999/00/
Category 1992/93 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00
1992/93
(%)
Institutions
Kindergarten 22 36 43 53 60 69 74 336
Primary school 58 110 131 146 162 168 177 305
Institution for special needs 3 5 3 3 5 3 3 100
d i
116
education
Vocational training school 2 8 6 8 8 8 7 350
Vocational apprentice school 1 1 3 4 4 5 8 800
Secondary school 33 48 52 63 68 85 87 264
Of these: high school 31 44 52 63 65 71 79 255
University, college 26 28 28 28 28 28 28 108
Students
Kindergarten 1 539 2 650 3 290 3 947 4 236 5 031 5 230 340
Primary school 11 260 23 315 28 695 3 690 37 044 39 078 42 270 375
105 185 171 150 177 182 314 299
education
Vocational training school 27 1 095 576 587 662 460 314 1163
Vocational apprentice school 147 152 514 597 628 1 156 1 971 1341
Secondary school 9 806 14 164 15 257 17 153 19 156 19 987 21 523 219
Of these: high school 8 905 13 277 13 892 15 520 16 714 17 484 18 707 210
University, college 2 137 5 237 6 302 7 514 8 570 9 414 10 227 478
Teachers
Kindergarten 123 221 274 327 375 440 459 373
Primary school 899 1915 2383 2663 3030 3261 3479 387
17 30 15 24 41 43 58 341
education
Vocational training school 4 90 33 45 38 32 21 525
Vocational apprentice school 18 13 56 62 71 112 163 905
117
Secondary school 794 1277 1467 1709 1922 2093 2365 298
Of these: high school 735 1213 1365 1621 1747 1884 2119 288
University, college 429 912 1258 1238 1416 1710 3336 778
Source: KSH, Magyar Statisztikai Zsebkönyv ’96, ’98; OM educational statistics 1998/99, 1999/00 and information provided by Mrs. László Szalay
Table 44
The consumers' price index, and the changes of the gross salaries of full time employees and employees working in public education between
1990–1999*
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Consumers' price index** 128,9 135,0 166,1 203,5 241,8 309,7 383,2 453,3 517,7 569,5
Gross salary of individuals 738,2
employed in national 128,6 167,2 209,1 255,0 318,5 272,0 417,9 547,8 648,0
economy
Gross salary of individuals 540,1
employed in public 124,2 152,6 188,1 209,7 271,4 292,3 329,1 403,5 474,9
education
Source: Data provided by the Wage-agreements Department of the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs, published by Szép, 1999
*
1990 data indicated in the percentage of 1989 data, from 1991 data indicated on the basis of the base data of 1990.
**
Data indicated in the percentage of 1989 data.
118
Table 45
Teachers’ salaries received by teachers of different amounts of experience in the OECD countries, 1998 (expressed in the proportion of per
capita GDP and in USD/hour)
Proportion of salaries of Proportion of beginners'

Proportion of beginners' The number of years to be Per hour salary of teachers
teachers with 15 year of salaries and the salaries of
Country salary and the per capita served in order to reach with 15 years of practice
practice and the per capita teachers with 15 year of
GDP the highest salary level (USD/hour)
GDP practice
England 1,0 1,0 1,0 1,6 1,7 1,7 1,5 1,7 1,7 n.d.. n.d.. n.d.. 45 48 48
Australia 1,2 1,2 1,2 1,6 1,6 n.d.. 1,4 1,4 n.d.. 8 8 8 41 45 n.d..
Austria 0,9 0,9 1,0 1,1 1,2 1,3 1,3 1,3 1,3 34 34 34 39 44 50
Belgium (French) 0,9 0,9 1,1 1,2 1,3 1,6 1,4 1,4 1,5 27 27 25 33 42 59
Czech Republic 0,5 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,7 0,7 1,3 1,3 1,3 32 32 32 13 13 16
Denmark 1,0 1,0 1,1 1,2 1,2 1,6 1,2 1,2 1,5 10 10 13 48 48 82
USA 0,8 0,8 0,8 1,1 1,0 1,1 1,4 1,3 1,4 30 30 30 35 34 38
Finland 0,9 0,9 n.d.. 1,1 1,3 1,3 1,2 1,4 n.d.. 20 20 20 36 58 68
France 0,9 1,0 1,0 1,2 1,3 1,3 1,4 1,3 1,3 34 34 34 30 47 48
Greece 1,3 1,4 1,4 1,6 1,7 1,7 1,2 1,2 1,2 33 33 33 30 39 39
the Netherlands 1,1 1,1 1,1 1,3 1,4 1,9 1,2 1,2 1,7 25 24 24 30 34 48
Ireland 0,9 1,0 1,0 1,5 1,5 1,5 1,6 1,6 1,6 23 22 22 39 49 49
Korea 1,6 1,6 1,6 2,7 2,7 2,7 1,7 1,7 1,7 41 41 41 62 80 82
Hungary 0,5 0,5 0,7 0,8 1,0 1,0 1,4 1,9 1,5 40 40 40 15 20 20
Germany 1,2 1,4 1,5 1,7 1,7 1,9 1,3 1,2 1,2 28 28 27 49 53 63
Norway 0,7 0,7 0,8 0,9 0,9 0,9 1,2 1,2 1,2 28 28 28 34 39 51
Italy 0,9 1,1 1,0 1,1 1,2 1,2 1,2 1,2 1,2 35 35 35 31 42 42
Portugal 1,1 1,1 1,1 1,7 1,7 1,7 1,6 1,6 1,6 29 29 29 31 42 51
Spain 1,4 1,6 1,7 1,7 1,8 2,0 1,2 1,2 1,2 42 42 39 38 59 63
119
Switzerland 1,2 1,4 1,7 1,6 1,9 2,3 1,3 1,3 1,3 25 23 23 48 60 90
Sweden 0,8 0,8 0,9 1,0 1,1 1,2 1,3 1,3 1,3 n.d.. n.d.. n.d.. n.d.. n.d.. n.d..
Turkey n.d.. n.d.. n.d.. n.d.. n.d.. n.d.. 1,2 1,2 1,2 20 20 20 n.d.. n.d.. n.d..
New Zealand 1,1 1,1 1,1 1,8 1,8 1,8 1,6 1,6 1,6 8 8 8 33 33 37
Average* 0,8 1,0 1,1 1,1 1,4 1,5 1,4 1,4 1,4 30 26 26 35 43 52
*
Unweighed average.
Explanation: The first the three columns under the same heading contains data for the lower primary level, the second column contains data for the lower secondary (the upper
section of primary school) level, whilst the third column contains data for upper secondary (secondary school) level of general education.
120
Table 46
Changes in numbers of teachers according to qualification, 1989/90–1999/00
1989/90
Qualification 1989/90 1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00
= 100%
Medium level pre-school
7 539 6 324 6 758 6 162 5 663 5 202 4 756 3 647 2 232 1 738 1 434 19,0
teacher
Higher level pre-school
25 413 25 668 25 625 26 131 26 341 26 800 26 569 27 200 28 526 29 292 29 117 114,6
teacher
Lower level primary
39 183 35 521 38 528 38 392 38 405 38 603 37 481 36 212 35 961 36 069 36 101 92,1
school teacher
Higher level primary
46 989 56 118 48 157 47 948 48 833 49 040 47 588 45 808 45 030 45 088 44 566 94,8
school teacher
Secondary school teacher 22 089 24 415 23 926 24 741 25 793 26 523 26 938 27 301 27 695 29 014 29 919 135,5
Other types of teachers 8 147 4 788 7 314 7 477 7 935 8 363 7 918 7 304 8 045 8 321 8 699 106,8
Without pedagogical
7 740 8 184 6 277 6 377 7 912 8 141 7 037 6 203 5 177 4 828 4 377 56,6
qualification
Teachers qualified for
4 030 n. a. 3 875 3 849 4 204 4 167 3 990 3 726 3 511 3 286 3 134 77,8
professional education
Teachers qualified for
3 896 3 878 3 878 3 955 3 994 4 044 4 136 4 062 4 132 4 256 4 230 108,6
special needs education
Without qualification 883 1 643 776 847 807 838 800 834 806 659 572 64,8
Total 165 909 166 539 165 114 165 879 169 887 171 671 167 213 162 297 161 115 162 551 162 149 97,7
Source: OM educational statistics; data from the last two years: calculations by Zsófia Szép and Mrs. László Szalay on the basis of OM educational statistics for 1998/99
1999/00
121
Table 47
The proportion of teachers of different age in primary and secondary education in EU
countries and Hungary, 1996 (%)
Country Below 30 50 or older

Austria 15,1 12,6
Belgium 14,0 23,3
Denmark 3,1 26,8
United Kingdom 12,5 22,2
Finland 10,4 28,1
France 11,8 21,0
Ireland 14,4 23,1
Iceland 21,1 21,2
Luxembourg 13,6 25,0
Hungary* 20,0 16,6
Germany 3,2 31,8
Norway 9,4 31,0
Portugal 17,4 15,4
Sweden 6,2 39,6
Average of the
11,7 24,7
countries
*
Hungarian data gained from a nationally representative survey conducted in 1996/97 (Nagy, 1998a).
Table 48
Proportion of women amongst teachers in OECD countries, 1995 (%)
Primary and lower Upper secondary

Country
secondary level level
Hungary 84 55
Italy 84 55
USA 78 50
Sweden 73 42
Austria 72 49
United Kingdom 70 n. a.
New Zealand 69 48
Finland 68 n. a.
Belgium (Flanders) 67 44
Spain 66 48
Denmark 58 45
Greece 58 46
Norway 58 32
Korea 56 25
Germany 52 24
Japan 51 24
Turkey 43 40
Average of 65 42
countries
123
Table 49
Data of national minority education, 1990/91, 1995/96–1999/00
institutions students in schools Of all students

teachers providing
Type of school/ providing minority providing
minority language Romania Slovenia
school year language minority language Croat German Serb Slovak Other
education n n
education education
Kindergarten
1990/91 287 680 14 009 1684 9 187 453 – 2584 101 n. a.
1995/96 364 935 20 470 1603 14 589 647 184 3258 79 110
1996/97 365 959 20 486 1549 14 658 651 212 3211 87 118
1997/98 386 993 20 440 1585 14 744 617 164 2989 88 253
1998/99 390 1010 19 703 1486 14 177 541 174 3115 95 115
1999/00 n. a. 1039 19 792 1388 14 141 547 181 3050 112 373
Of these:
kindergartens where
the language of n. a. 531 2 300 253 1 488 130 87 103 0 239
instruction is a
minority language
Primary schools
1990/91 322 1048 44 545 3870 33 550 961 n.d. 5879 235 50
1995/96 371 1255 49 821 2657 41 029 1041 281 4317 116 380
1996/97 384 1338 51 627 2517 42 940 1069 278 4444 131 248
1997/98 390 1357 53 021 2476 44 338 1127 227 4409 120 324
1998/99 393 1433 53 998 2579 45 240 1156 228 4412 122 261
1999/00 395 1461 55 013 2526 46 254 1198 275 4424 116 137
Of these: primary
schools where the
language of 18 106 1 760 319 758 427 164 92 0 0
instruction is a
minority language
Secondary school
1990/91 10 n. a. 1 301 251 746 128 – 176 n. a. n. a.
1995/96 23 165 1 987 214 1 376 114 75 197 11 n. a.
1996/97 26 164 2 136 203 1 498 118 72 205 10 30
1997/98 22 196 2 224 214 1 559 104 92 195 7 53
1998/99 21 211 2 335 217 1 672 110 103 132 8 93
1999/00 23 226 2 825 219 1 978 257 126 118 9 118
Of these: secondary
schools where the
language of 11 226 1 839 219 1 129 129 126 118 0 118
instruction is a
minority language
Source: OM educational statistics; 1999/00: calculations by Erika Garami and Tibor Könyvesi
125
Annex 4 – Levels and competencies of decision

Levels of decision and competency in Hungarian public education
External
Functions/
Central level Regional level County level Local level School level Teachers stockholders
Levels
(e.g. parents)
Institutional
objectives,
R+ R+ D ++, C D ++ D++ C+
decisions on
profiles
R++, D +
(D++ in the
Financing and
case of D+ D++, C D ++, C C+
resources
earmarked
subsidies)
Personnel R ++ - D ++, C D ++, S++
D ++
R ++, C
(appointment of
(D++
matriculation
Content compilation of - D ++,C D ++, C D++ C+
exam
the list of
presidents)
textbooks)
S ++
Building,
infrastructure R+ R +, D + D ++ D+
equipment
Internal
R+ - D ++, C D ++ D++ C+
organization
126
R ++
(D++ S ++ (experts'
Quality
compilation of list, evaluative R+ D +,C, S ++ D ++, S ++ D++, S +
assurance
the national list examination)
of experts)
Flow of
R+ S ++ R +, D + R, D ++ D ++ D ++
students
Evaluation and
R ++ D ++ - - D ++ D ++
testing
R regulation
D concrete decisions + has a role
C right of consultation ++ has a strong role
S right of supervision and evaluation
Source: Altrichter…, 1999
127
Annex 5 – Teachers initiating content innovation and conducting

content development in the 1980's and 90's
Several individuals contributed significantly to the reform and content development of the
Hungarian education in the 1980's and 90's. The list below is not full, its aim being to
illustrate the large number of innovators. It contains the names of individuals included – for
the reason of their acknowledged achievements in content development – in the book entitled
Pedagógiai Ki Kicsoda (Who is Who in Pedagogy) published in 1997.
Mrs. Lóránt Balázs (chemistry),

Mrs. Pál Bali (environmental education in the initial phase of the school period)
Huba Bálványos (visual education)
Katalin Bánfalvy (music)
Zoltán Bánréti (content development of language-communication education)
Ildikó Bárdossy (logistics and evaluation of school experiments)
Ilona Bartalus (music)
József Benda (theory and implementation of Humanistic Cooperative Learning)
András Benedek (general development of vocational education)
Mihály Berend (development of teaching biology)
Mrs. Antal Csákány (content development of physics)
%HQ&VDSy FRJQLWLYHSHGDJRJ\
Éva Csöregh (drawing)
László F. Csorba (integrated education in natural sciences)
Judit Dékány (special needs pedagogy, with special attention to the development of
the field of serious mental injuries)
Tamás Deme (arts education)
Attila Elekes (health education programs)
Mrs. Barnabás Eperjesy (Freinet pedagogy and environmental education)
-HQ(V]WHUJiO\RV GHYHORSPHQWRISULPDU\VFKRROFXUULFXODDQGWH[WERRNIDPLOLHV
Katalin Falus (legal education programs and civic education)
Péter Farkas (development of vocational training models)
Katalin Forray (music education)
István Franyó (biology)
Erzsébet Kólyi (Mrs. Fürst) (education in chemistry)
Katalin Gábri (education in mathematics)
Anna Gádor (introduction of the Rogers school)
Piroska Gádor (mathematics)
Emil Gaul (visual education)
(UYLQ*HFV SK\VLFV
János Géczi (biology)
Attila Gerencsér (teaching of reading)
Vilmos Giber (physical education)
Imre Goda (education in literature)
Mária Gósy (learning of reading)
László Gönczöl (physical education)
Mrs. János Gulyás (special needs education curricula and programs)
Sándor Hajdú (mathematics)
Irén Hajnal (environmental education)

Péter Hamar (film aesthetics and visual culture)
Zsuzsa Harsányi (education in mathematics)
Péter Havas (environmental education)
Katalin Hortobágyi (forest school programs and project-methodology pedagogy)
Gergely Horváth (geography)
Attila H. Horváth (Freinet pedagogy)
Zsuzsa Horváth (Hungarian literature)
Katalin J. Balázs (textbooks on environmental chemistry)
György Jakab (media education)
Katalin Jáki (geography)
Károlyné Janza (special needs education programs)
Nándor Juhász (curricula and talent-development programs in mathematics)
István Kamarás (behavioral science, ethics)
Judit Fülöp (Mrs. Kádár) (research in reading and comprehension in the mother
tongue)
József Kaposi (history)
János Karlovitz (developments concerning textbook theory and evaluation)
Andrea Kárpáti (visual and information education)
György Kelsánszky (technology)
Éva Keresztény (teaching of Latin and Russian as second languages)
Eszter Kerényi (music)
Katalin Keresztessy (physical education)
Zsuzsa Kereszty (curricular developments of early school years)
Imre Knausz (history)
László Kojanitz (history)
Klára Kokas (music)
Ákos Komlóssy (literature)
Mrs. István Koncz (information technology)
György Kontra (biology and health education)
István Kontra (music)
Márta Szakály (Mrs. Kordos) (studies on nature)
Richárd Korzenszky (theology)
Mrs. István Kovács (chemistry)
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Ferenc Kutas (Hungarian language and literature)
Sándor Ladányi (history and theology)
Mrs. József Lajos (mathematics)
Ilona Laki (geography)
János Lehoczky (studies on nature)
Gábor Lénárd (biology)
Mrs. Csák Ligeti (subjects for primary education and programs for talented students)
Ferenc Loránd (comprehensive school experiment and holocaust pedagogy)
Klára Madarász (foreign language education)
Marian Makádi (geography)
Andrea Bartal (Mrs. Mayer) (mathematics)
Zsuzsa Mátrai (social and civic education)
Vera Méhes (early development of mathematical thinking)
Zsuzsa Mesterházi (special needs education programs)
Miklós Molnár (physics)
129
András Nádasi (technology, audio-visual and multimedia teaching materials)

Mrs. Attila Nagy (technology)
Kálmán Nagy (talent scouting)
István Nahalka (education in natural sciences, constructive theory of learning)
Károly Ozsváth (physical education)
Imre Pacsai (Russian as a second language)
Károly Pála (literature)
Lóránd Pálmay (mathematics)
Péter Pápay (mathematics in the early school phase)
Ágnes Papp (grammar)
Margit Korányi (Mrs. Paróczay) (grammar)
Karolina Ágnes Pázmány (visual education and drawing)
Judit Feyér (Mrs. András Petri) (mother tongue education)
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Éva Pfister (economic education)
Péter Radó (education of national and ethnic minorities)
Katalin Tóth (Mrs. Rakaczky) (conflict pedagogy)
Ágnes Ranschburg (history and cognitive research instruments)
Erzsébet Réz (practice of school development)
Katalin S. Nagy (music)
Mária Lengyel Mrs. Sal) (special need education curricula and teaching materials)
Júlia Szekszárdi (topics and methods for homeroom teachers, conflict pedagogy)
László Simon (devising of teaching materials, physics)
Endre Sipos (drawing)
Lajos Sipos (literature)
Mihály Sipos (accounting)
János Surányi (mathematics)
Mrs. László Szabó (chemistry)
Éva Nagy (Mrs. Szebányi) (speech therapy programs)
Ágnes Szentiványi (English language education)
Anna Szeszler (school development and communication education in the early school
phase)
Gábor Szerémi (biology)
Katalin Szikora (sports and physical education)
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István Tatár (mathematics)
Mihály Takaró (Hungarian literature)
Edit Rónaky (Mrs. Tasnádi) (mother tongue communication)
István Tatár (physics)
Péter Tomcsányi (physics)
Klára Tompa (evaluation of mathematical skills, development of teaching materials
for mathematics)
Mária Balogh (Mrs. Tompa) (environmental education)
Eszter Tóth (physics)
József Tölgyesi (geography)
László Trencsényi (arts pedagogy projects)
Erzsébet Tunyogi (game therapy project method)
Mrs. Gábor Ugrin (development of the activities of school librarians)
László V. Molnár (history)
130
Rózsa V. Raisz (grammar)

Irén Vágó (development of self-knowledge programs)
László Vágó (physical education)
Károly Varajti (geography)
István Varga (education for family life)
Marianne Várnagy (school-system adult education programs)
Géza Vasy (Hungarian literature)
Katalin Vég (Roma programs)
László Vékássy (speech therapy programs)
Béla Veresegyházi (history)
András Victor (environmental chemistry programs and environmental education)
Judit Vihar (Russian language)
Attila Villányi (chemistry)
Judit Wajand (chemistry)
Mária Wellish (programs in museum pedagogy)
Ervin Wladár (history and social education)
Sándor Zátonyi (physics)
Géza Závodszky (history)
Mrs. József Zsolnay (language and communication education in the early school
phase)
László Zsúdel (development of teaching materials for physics)
131

匈牙利 教育体系的发展

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匈牙利 教育体系的发展

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ftp://ftp.oki.hu/bie/bie.

The Development of the Hungarian Educational

By Gábor Halász, Erika Garami, Péter Havas and Irén Vágó

National Institute for Public Education

1. The Hungarian educational system at the end of the 20th century: a

2. Educational content and learning strategies for the 21st century

The Development of Education in Hungary:

1. The Hungarian educational system at the end of the 20th century:

1.1 The main reforms and innovations of the past decade

1.1.1 Causes of the changes

1.1.2 The legal framework

1.1.3 The structural conditions of the educational system

Source: Jelentés…, 2000

High School Night Students in Total

Source: Education at a Glance, 2000; Jelentés…, 2000

1.1.4 The evolution of control and financing relations

1.1.5 Changes in evaluation policy

• Strengthening the government’s role in financing education and enforcing quality

1.1.6 Current and expectable reforms

language communication abilities, community development and alleviating social

1.2.1 Changes concerning participation in education

Source: KSH, Magyar Statisztikai Évkönyv 1990-1998

Source: OM Educational Statistics; KSH, Oktatási adatok (HO]HWHVDGDWRN 

1.2.2 Establishing equal opportunity

The chances in educational opportunity present a contradictory picture of Hungary in the

1.2.3 The quality and relevance of education

1.2.4 Social participation in the reform process

1.3 The main experiences of the reform period

1.4 Major problems and challenges

2. Educational content and learning strategies for the 21st century

In Hungary, decision-making and responsibilities in determining educational content are

2.1.1.1 Decision-making rights and responsibilities at the central level

2.1.1.2. Decision-making rights and responsibilities at the local level

2.1.1.3. Decision-making rights and responsibilities at the institutional level

2.1.1.4. Changes in the sharing of responsibilities

2.1.2 Curricular planning and curriculum preparation

2.1.2.1 Central curriculum documents

2.1.2.1.1 Common basic principles

2.1.2.1.2 Characteristics of the National Core Curriculum

As we mentioned above, NAT differs significantly from the previous, centralized

2.1.2.1.3 Characteristics of the framework curriculum

The legal regulations concerning the implementation of the framework curricula

2.1.2.2 School level programs

In educational institutions education is conducted according to the pedagogical program of the

2.1.2.3 Manifold program concurrence

School Year Grades

2.1.2.4 Content and timeframes

2.1.2.4.1 Proportions of fields of knowledge and elements of knowledge

Old Central Framework OECD

2.1.2.4.2 Length of the teaching year and students’ workload

Mandatory Timeframe Optional Timeframe* Upper limit of

In international comparison, the total intended instruction time is quite low in

2.1.3 Teaching and learning strategies

2.1.3.1 The methodological culture of teachers

2.1.3.2 The present state of the teaching-learning relationship

2.1.3.3 Means and methods for strengthening the teaching-learning relationship

In order to strengthen the learning-oriented nature of education, there is a strategic

2.1.3.4 Help given to teachers in preparing and implementing curricula

2.1.4 Evaluation policies and methods

2.1.4.1 Evaluation policy means

2.1.4.3 Evaluating student performance: legal regulations and practice

2.1.4.4 Methods of assisting students who fail to meet the standards

2.1.4.2.1 Changes in the rate of individual progress

2.1.4.2.3 Financing tools

匈牙利教育体系的发展

匈牙利教育体系的发展

Source: OM Educational Statistics; KSH, Oktatási adatok (HO]HWHVDGDWRN

HOFFMANN RÓZSA (1999): eYN|Q\YDPDJ\DUN|]QHYHOpVUO, Oktatási Minisztérium és