Balint Magyar Minister of Education

“Children are our top priority.” The reform of the Hungarian education system began in the spirit of this statement. The main objective of the comprehensive educational reform is to provide children with the knowledge that helps them cope well in their adult years. In order to live up to the slogan of life-long-learning, the content of education is being revised, with the aim of radically reducing the quantity of redundant knowledge, extending the time to be devoted to the development of minimum competences, as well as introducing teaching content and materials which are relevant to the appropriate age group. With these principles in mind, a new Public Education Act was enacted and the National Core Curriculum was revised. Measures taken to replace a so-called “shadow education system” based on unequal opportunities include the abolition of entrance examinations into higher education, the introduction of a new two-tier structure of the secondary school-leaving examination, which measures skills and not only lexical knowledge, as well as the launching of the year of intensive foreign language learning in upper-secondary education.

Minimizing differences between schools is one of the major goals of the Ministry of Education. We firmly believe that education is the best way to combat challenges such as social disadvantages, a handicap which reproduces itself from generation to generation, unemployment, or social exclusion. By introducing a system of normative financing, schools are now encouraged to integrate socially disadvantaged pupils and/or those with learning difficulties into ordinary classes, where they learn together with their more fortunate peers. Access to up-to-date and high-quality educational facilities is granted to all pupils, irrespective of the geographical location of their school. The Sulinet Express Programme was introduced to serve this objective, among many other initiatives. Within the framework of this programme, every school in Hungary will have access to the internet, new teaching rooms will be established and modern digital teaching materials will be introduced in the course of 2005.

The system of higher education is planned to be renewed on the basis of the principles of the Bologna Convention, thereby linking higher education in Hungary with the European Higher Education Area. This will give Hungarian students the opportunity to obtain qualifications at different levels of their study process. As a result of this reform, a network of institutions is hoped to emerge, which will provide internationally competitive services, and this system will be flexibly adjusted to the changing socio-economic demands of the country.