Report: Education in Hungary 1997 [antikvár]

Foreword This book is a shortened version of a report on school education published by the National Institute of Public Education (OKI) in November 2003 on the request of the Ministry of Education (OM). 'Education in Hungary' was first published in 1996, following the review of Hungarian education policy by the OECD. The idea of producing a comprehensive analysis of the development of education at regular intervals was originally motivated by the impact of this review process on education policy debates in Hungary. This was also part of the OECD examiners' recommendations, who suggested that an analytical public report based on statistical data and research results on the state of education would contribute to the enlightenment of public debates, and to the development of the knowledge basis of education policy. The three earlier publications (in the years 1996, 1998 and 2000) have proved that the availability of a thorough and regular professional analysis may have a favourable influence on the public discourse on education, as it encourages evidence-based approaches and higher professional standards. These reports have certainly contributed to the predictability, rationality and quality of the education policy process, and the feedback provided by it may have had a favourable influence also on the quality of education. The regular documentation of education policy events in the period of transition from authoritarianism to democracy, characterized by radical changes and by the emergence of new political cleavages, has certainly contributed to continuity and to balance between change and stability. 'Education in Hungary' focuses on schools, that is, on what is often referred to as K12 education. Tertiary and adult education, as well as vocational training is cited insofar as they have relevance to primary and secondary education. The report is addressed to a large audience: those who, at national or local level, make education policy decisions or have an influence on them, teachers who have an interest in the development of the broader system of education, graduate or post-graduate students in education, including teachers taking part in in-service training courses, researchers who need data or background information for their research, and last but not least, the well informed citizen who simply wants to know more about what happens in a public policy area. The aim of this abridged English version, its volume being about one fifth of the original one, is naturally different. It aims at helping the foreign reader to get access to the basic information on the Hungarian education system and on main recent trends characterising its development. The original version of 'Education in Hungary' is the outcome of the work of a larger community. Fifteen authors, on the basis of more than forty background studies, wrote 7 Foreword This is the second time we have published a report on the current situation in Hungarian school education. The previous volume {Education in Hungary, 1996), which focused on the changes which took place in the field of education from the end of the 1980s to the mid-1990s, was based on a much more detailed publication in Hungarian {Jelentés a magyar közoktatásról, Report on Hungarian School Education, 1995). During the course of 1998 the second Hungarian report was prepared {Jelentés a magyar közoktatásról, Report on Hungarian School Education, 1997). The abridged and updated version of the latter report is recommended to our Esteemed Readers. The compilation of this volume was facilitated by the antecedents. Here we can focus on the changes in the field of education in 1996-97. There is only one aspect of change more recent which could be included in this volume: the parliamentary elections of May 1998 witnessed the victory of new political forces. As a consequence, a centre-right government has been formed in Hungary. The most significant measures of the new government, aimed at the transformation of the central educational administration are introduced here, but it is too early to venture for more, as we can obviously not deal with the new governments current educational policy, which is under review. We have been greatly aided in our work by the development that a great deal of data published internationally in comparative literature about our country and its education system over the past few years. The interested reader can now easily find some more detailed information on a particular area or can satisfy his/her demands for more specialised topics (in the more refined statistical or comparative educational analyses now available). Therefore, this volume sets out to present the Hungarian school education system in general terms and also to describe the major areas