1.2. Effectiveness in Education

1.2.1. Access to Educational Provisions

In the community of developed industrial countries one can witness the expansion of secondary and tertiary education over the last decades, whereas since the 1999s LLL strategies and adult education have been revaluated and considered indispensable. In all OECD countries it can be observed that the estimated duration of schooling has increased considerably between 1995-2000. In Hungary it is especially noticeable that children spend 16.8 years in educational institutions. (Education at a Glance, 2002). This is partly due to the radical expansion of tertiary education.

In Hungary schooling is comprehensive until the end of compulsory enrolment and therefore school attendance of the age group 15-19 exceeds the OECD average but for senior age groups this indicator is gradually declining. At the same time, there was a dynamic improvement in Hungary in the area of post-17 school attendance between 1998-2001. Whereas in 1998/1999 73% of 17-year-old pupils and 57% of 18 year-old pupils were enrolled to daytime education, their proportion of attendance has considerably risen by 2001/2002 to 83% and 66%, respectively. If one takes all pupils into consideration, nearly half of all 20 year-old pupils (46%) attend an educational institution – similarly to the Scandinavian countries.

The elder generations lag behind the OECD-average in school attendance, nevertheless, the rate of inactivity is dramatically high in the age group of 25-29. One fifths of this age group is out of school and the labour market, a fact, which demonstrates that the labour market integration of the Hungarian youth has its problems. Since legislation guarantees free access to second job qualification for disadvantaged young adults, an increasing number of young people obtain two qualifications of the same educational level. This means certain delay in accessing the labour market, but promises safer career perspectives. (Report 2003.)

Table 3.
Distribution of the young adults' labour-market status by various age groups in Hungary and the OECD, 2000

Source: Education at a Glance, 2002

Figure 1.
Proportion of enrolled pupils in mainstream (day-time) education related to age groups in Hungary 1998/99 and 2001/02 (%)

Source: Ministry of Education, Statistical Bulletin, Educational Yearbook 2001/2002 in: Report… 2003

1.2.2. Equal Opportunities in Education

The government and the Ministry of Education made important initiatives between 2002-2004 to combat the segregation of disadvantaged and Roma pupils. The process of the desegregation involved legislative amendments, new professional programmes and networking. As a new element, the prohibition of segregation has been introduced to schools, which provides an opportunity to discover and combat indirect discrimination as well.

The Act on Public Education introduces the new method of extracurricular, school-based teaching form for disadvantaged pupils. The state-guaranteed integration normative support enables public educational institutions with a large number of Roma and other disadvantaged pupils to benefit from the wide range of pedagogical services provided by the National Educational Integration Network. There is a unique programme “leave the last school bench in the classroom and come forward”, which aims to combat the unnecessary degradation and disqualification of not-handicapped Roma children. This project is supported by a numerous group of experts.

In 2005 the educational administration launches a programme for the elaboration of anti-discriminatory indicator system, which will help to monitor educational integration programmes.

1.2.3. Quality in Education

The provision of quality and effectiveness of public education and their assessment are very important objectives for the educational policies in all developed countries. The weight of this policy area is demonstrated by the EU's Lisbon Strategy, which adopts an educational programme for the period of 2002-2010 with three priorities, the first of which is the improvement of quality and effectiveness of education and training. In Hungary, this field has received particular political and professional attention since the mid-nineties.

In the framework of assessing the quality and effectiveness of public education the evaluation of learning performances plays a crucial role. This primarily takes place in such cultural domains, which belong to key competences and skills and have cross-curricular features. These domains of learning have additional significance to all subjects and may prove decisive in terms of further studies and labour market success. Reading literacy, mathematics, natural sciences, ICT, and foreign languages have the greatest importance as subjects providing labour market skills and competences. The fact that these areas are considered particularly important in both the Hungarian and international educational surveys can partly be explained by the availability and emergence of reliable assessment methods, which can handle large amounts of data.

In 1999 the Hungarian Ministry of Education introduced the Comenius 2000 Quality Assurance Programme for Public Education. This programme contains 3 models for both the maintainers and the institutions themselves:

• partner-centred co-operation
• TQM-type, comprehensive quality assurance framework
• knowledge transfer

(Comenius 2000, 1999; Report, 2000).

The issues concerning quality and effectiveness are closely related to efficiency, which primarily refers to the relation between financial expenditures and result. The outcome of education is a highly debated issue, whether it is the knowledge of students, better opportunities on the labour market, or the value of the social capital increased by education, etc. The definition of quality is also a hot issue. We may observe three definitions that coexist simultaneously and are complementary in Hungarian education: (1) compliance to national standards, (2) adherence to local standards defined by the individual institutions, and their maintainers (3) satisfaction of stakeholders. All these refer to the quality of educational outcomes or “products”. The notion of quality is also applied to the entirety of the institutional operation, which may be tied to efficiency in management and to organizational culture. The effectiveness instruments are gaining significance in the quality assurance evaluation processes. Evaluation is no longer focused exclusively on student performance. The assessment of quality and effectiveness now involves a growing number of fields and activities, and there are increasing efforts in finding a link between the process of assessment and school development, educational management and planning.

The Ministry of Education provides competitive bids for schools since 2000 to develop one of the above models by hiring external experts. In the first round (Spring 2000) 1400 institutions applied for funding to realise the first or second models in Comenius 2000. It was not easy to transfer quality assurance techniques originated in economic and business environment to school organizations and therefore the detailed regulatory procedures did not contribute to major improvements in school management and remained superficial.  After the testing phase the Ministry of Education issued a decree to regulate the schools' quality management tasks and defined the main issues of professional administration and monitoring. In the course of the 2003 amendment of the Act on Public Education quality management issues became redefined in legislation.

One of the important functions of quality assurance programmes is the promotion of knowledge transfer and learning organisations. This was characteristic for the Comenius 2000 programme as well, where the third model was based on knowledge transfer. In the frame of the programme a wide range of activities were developed to promote mutual learning, competence building and the transfer of knowledge.

Since 2002 new contents and methods have emerged in the new educational policies regarding the quality assurance programme. The main objectives were to dissolve the monopoly of Comenius programme and to provide an opportunity for the accreditation of alternative quality assurance models.

There was great demand to develop new methodological materials to support local activities related to quality assurance and the 2003 legislative amendments prescribe the development of quality assurance programmes both for educational institutions and their maintainers.

The introduction of the national competence survey system is an outstanding initiative that serves the development of educational quality and effectiveness. This project was introduced in 2001 in grades 5 and 9 in the fields of literacy and numeracy. This was supplemented by a diagnostic development surveillance system launched in 2002, which was designed to monitor the necessary set of competences to enter the first grade at school.

1.2.4. Contents Regulation for Education

Hungarian educational administration has put a great emphasis on curricular regulations in recent years. The first attempt to regulate output procedures in public education took place in 1997 with the publication of basic rules for a two-level secondary school leaving examination, which shall only be introduced in 2005 and 2008, respectively. At the same time, it is worth mentioning that in 2003 a new competence centred concept for joint secondary school leaving and tertiary entrance examinations was published. (Report 2003).

Following the change of government in 1998, a fundamental change took place in the system of central content regulation. The 1999 Amendment to the Public Education Act introduced a new regulatory tool for all school types: the frame curricula.

With the introduction of the frame curricula, the Ministry of Education intended to re-define the framework for the traditional prescription of educational content along the lines of individual subjects, maximised the compulsory number of lessons in each subject, and maximized the daily workload of students. It enhanced the teaching of the new cultural sub-domains of the NCC by introducing modular subjects in certain grades. In some fields the frame curricula restored the old conditions prior to the NCC, while in other aspects they presented a continuation of already started reforms.

In 2002 the new educational administration introduced a new decree to amend frame curricula and to abolish compulsory introduction of the elaborated frame curricula. In 2003 the Ministry of Education revised the NCC, which led to the restructuring of local school programmes.

The parallel introduction of NCC and frame curricula indicate the transitional status of the Hungarian central content regulation in public education, which means that the Hungarian education system has to live with several different programmes. (Report 2003)

1.2.5. Partnership and Civic Society

Partnership is one of the key concepts and working methods of all leading educational administrations. There is no effective and successful educational policy without the continuous control of the various social, professional and consultative bodies. Apart from the traditional parliamentary forms of political reconciliation, there are a number of forums present on many levels, enabling the involved social, professional and civil groups to influence decisions concerning the system of public education. In the nineties, a multitude of civil and professional organizations were established with various interests in public education. Yet this richness, remarkable even on an international scale, also means that the framework for reconciliation is divided into small fractions, jeopardizing the efficiency of the processes of reconciliation and consultation. The professional and civil stakeholders in education acquire consultative rights upon any content and legislative initiatives proposed by the Ministry of Education, and may take part in deciding the composition of certain consultative bodies.

In February 2002 there were 172 such organisations in the official list of the Ministry of Education that had special interests in public education and applied for registration. These represent such social partners as parents, pupils, and the representatives of professional and scientific groups, churches, special educational needs pupils or the citizens of disadvantaged regions and settlements.

The Regional Development and Training Committees play a key role in regional consultation. These committees are composed of the representatives of the regional employers' and employees' organizations, local governments, the regional chambers of commerce, the advisory boards of county level public foundations for the development of education, labour offices, higher education institutions. This consultative body is responsible for the regional-level allocation of resources.

There are a number of different platforms for local government dialogues but there are great differences between the various settlements in terms of opportunities.

The most important school level forum for consultation and reconciliation is the school board (iskolaszék). The school board has the right to express its opinions on school regulations and school affairs that may lead to increasing expenses for parents. Although as of 1996 the Act on Public Education does not make the establishment of the school board compulsory, within the educational establishments this self-governing body may play an influential role in deciding on various school regulatory documents. (Report 2003)