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Chapter DCurricula, examinations, and student attainment
Chapter D
Curricula, examinations, and student attainment
1. The National Core Curriculum (NCC) and the local curricula
The Hungarian Parliament adopted the National Core Curriculum (NCC) in autumn 1995, which marked the introduction of a new system of educational content regulation. The implementation of the NCC, however, is taking place gradually and will take several years. If the new, national-level requirements and local curricula come into force in line with the schedule laid down in the law the new system will govern the whole of the school education system by the middle of the next decade. But it is obviously not the central documentation but what happens in the classrooms that can mark a real change. It is a well-known fact that curricular reforms need decades to have their effects felt because the transformation of the everyday practice in schools is a difficult and slow process, because the publication and distribution of new textbooks and teaching aids takes time, and the adaptation of teachers mentality to the new conditions is even more gradual. In the following sections we will introduce the new system of educational content regulation and will refer to the changes taking place at the level of the schools, too.
The reform of content regulation
The new framework of content regulation was laid down by the 1993 Public Education Act. The Act superseded the former, centrally issued curricular documents1 and ruled that common educational content requirements would be determined for the end of the fourth, the sixth, the eighth, and the tenth grades by the curricular requirements of the National Core Curriculum. The Act changed the formerly one-level system of content regulation into a dual-level system by ruling that the educational work carried out in the schools should be governed by school-level or in other words, local curricula. The framework laid down in the 1993 Public Education Act was modified at certain important points by the amendments in 1995 and 1996 but the basic principles remained untouched. The NCC adopted in autumn 1995 lists common requirements for all pupils until the end of grade 10, irrespective of the type of school they attend. At the same time the regulations grant the schools great freedom to adjust their local curricula to the knowledge levels and abilities of their pupils.
It is important to emphasise that the NCC, the most important document of content regulation, was not issued by the Minister responsible for the educational sector but by the government. This is a significant distinction because the changes induced by the NCC have an impact on all the other main authorities involved in public education and on the governmental sectors represented by them. The changes in normative financing in the 1996 and in the 1997 Budgetary Acts demonstrate the direct consequences the NCC brings about in financing, which cannot be handled without the Ministry of Finance, the portfolio in charge of the whole national budget. The introduction of the NCC influences the responsibilities of the local governmental maintainers, and through them the whole of public administration and the state support system of the local governments. Thus constant conciliation with the Ministry of the Interior is indispensable. Finally, the NCC greatly effects the system of vocational education because there has to be harmony between the models of content regulation followed in general education and the ones in vocational education. Due to this, a mutual decision had to be made with the Ministry of Labour, the ministry responsible for the area of vocational education. As far as the adoption procedure is concerned it was an important change that the NCC could only be put before the government when the National Public Education Policy Council (OKNT) and the National Minorities Committee had given their consent to the proposed document.
The section of the 1996 Amendment to the Public Education Act dealing with content regulation - as opposed to the former regulations - introduced a new concept when using the term pedagogical cycle in education. There are three pedagogical cycles differentiated: kindergarten or pre-primary education, the foundation of general knowledge, and the preparation for the acquisition of a vocational qualification. The foundation of general knowledge cycle lasts from grade 1 to grade 12. The beginning of the third cycle, the preparation for a vocational qualification, is not determined by the law: its beginning may vary from school type to school type. Concerning the internal division of the 12 years of general education the 1996 Amendment did not supersede the 1993 Public Education Act, which said that the NCC should define the common and compulsory requirements for the ends of the fourth, the sixth, the eighth and the tenth grades. What was new in 1996, however, was that these requirements were formulated according to ten comprehensive cultural domains or knowledge areas rather than for individual subjects. The cultural domains are the following: Mother Tongue and Literature; A Modern Foreign Language; Mathematics; Man and Society; Man and Nature; Our Earth and Environment; Art, Music, Drama; Information Science; Life Management and Practical Skills; Physical Education and Sports.
The section of the 1996 Amendment to the Public Education Act dealing with content regulation deals with the question of the examination system in great detail. This Amendment ruled that the general requirements of the school leaving final examination should be published and should contain the common and compulsory requirements of education carried out in grades 11 and 12. This regulation in practice meant that a decision was passed about the NCC" of the final cycle of secondary education. The Public Education Act's rulings about the pedagogical cycles and about the general requirements of the school leaving examination practically ensure the survival of all vertical structural models within the education system (see in more detail in Chapter C on the education system and progress within the system) and it is left to the regulatory force of the NCC to further formulate the vertical cycles.
Contents reform and vocational education
In vocational education the most important tool of content regulation besides the NCC is the National Training Register (OKJ). This document lists the vocations the education for which may be offered by the school system, and determines by vocation the level and length of training, the proportion of theoretical and practical training, and lays down the qualifications prerequisite to the commencement of training. The concrete requirements for the acquisition of a vocational qualification can be defined in accordance with the OKJ and these can in turn serve as the bases of the curricular programmes. The 1993 Act on Vocational Education ruled on the publication of the OKJ. It was first published in December 1993 and was modified in May 1995 and December 1996. The Register lists 933 qualifications (vocations). 650 can be acquired through education and training in the public education system, and 216 of these can only be acquired in school-based education. Concerning the previous qualifications required we have already pointed out (in Chapter C on the education system and progress within the system) that almost exactly half of all qualifications can be obtained after secondary qualifications, and half of them with basic educational qualifications. As far as the length of training is concerned the majority (335) of the 650 qualifications obtainable in the school system require a two-year-long training. 64 vocations require longer time, and 251 require shorter training. The majority of the latter group, 176 vocations, require one-year-long training.
The introduction of the National Core Curriculum and adjusting the training in line with the National Training Register compels the majority of the institutions of vocational education to overhaul their educational contents. The vocational and examination requirements of the 650 OKJ qualifications obtainable in schools have been prepared by the relevant ministries and been issued as legal regulations. According to the law, however, a form of training can only be instigated in the schools when the central (curricular) programmes are ready and published. It was the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour to prepare the central programmes for the majority of the qualifications, for 343 out of the 650. By the end of October 1997 204 such programmes had been approved and altogether 332 had been submitted for approval.
The implementation of the National Core Curriculum
The introduction of the NCC and of the new system of content regulation in general has required completely different strategies in the decentralised environment of educational administration to the ones followed by traditional curricular reforms. The system of shared responsibilities determines the possible content and scope of action for the central government. The starting point for the central educational administration has to be the acknowledgement that the transformation of school education in Hungary largely depends on the local decision-makers, who enjoy great autonomy. The decision-makers at the central level recognise that the NCC can lead to positive changes only if the local governments, the schools, and the individual teachers play an active role in the process of implementation. The local governments have to strive for local and regional educational planning and for co-operation with other maintainers, the schools have to review their tasks and define them when negotiating with their maintainers, and the individual teachers have to be active in the realisation of the professional conception of their school they themselves have formulated.
Besides these factors it is inevitable that the central educational administration should play a leading role in the creation of the NCC's infrastructure: the provision of a proper choice of textbooks, curricula and teaching aids, the development and operation of a service system in charge of teachers in-service training, counselling, information technologies, etc. The National Institute of Public Education (OKI) was given a distinguished role in the implementation of the NCC (see more details on OKI in Chapter E: School personnel and the system of auxiliary educational services). In 1996 the following comprehensive tasks were allocated as the almost exclusive responsibilities of the OKI: the creation of the supply of curricula that would orient the preparation, the borrowing, or the development of the local curricula, and making the teachers acquainted with this supply of curricula. It was the task of the OKI to develop the standardised format of the curricula, then to identify the curriculum development workshops nation-wide and ask them to adjust their curricula to the standardised format. The OKI had to ensure that all schools have access to the central supply so that they could rely on them when starting the development of their own local documents.
The OKI decided to use the potential of, and to give a prominent role to, the tools of the modern information technologies in the development of the standardised format of the curricular supply, in the adjustment of the already existing curricula to this format, and in the dissemination of the prepared curricula, so a computerised curricular databank was created. The electronic editing and storing also made electronic dissemination possible. In order to disseminate curricula this way the OKI first organised a network of service points where schools and teachers could access the available curricula. The service points were evenly established in the various regions of the country because they were first housed by the county pedagogical institutes (on the county pedagogical institutes see Chapter E: School personnel and the system of auxiliary educational services). Later several schools volunteered to also serve as service points. Besides this network the curricular databank became directly accessible via the Internet, access to which was being installed in the individual schools.
The creation of the curricular supply and getting the curricula to the schools
Setting up the curricular databank started from the end of 1996. The OKI commissioned curriculum developers to develop either individual curricula to cover a particular cultural domain or school subject or complete school curricula, and to adjust them to the standardised format. There were also lectors asked to assess the curricula before adding them to the databank.2
In spring 1997, when the schools had to commence the development of their local curricula, the curricular supply was still rather modest. In the middle of March there were 2 complete school curricula, 13 curricula for a whole cultural domain, and - including the latter - 146 subject curricula in the databank. The preparation of complete school curricula lagged behind most though they were in greatest demand. The shortage of such curricula played an important role in contemplating at the beginning of 1997 whether the implementation of the NCC should be postponed. However, by October 1997 a number of complete and detailed school curricula were prepared and stored in the databank and the supply of subject curricula expanded considerably as well (see Table 1).
Number of complete school curricula and subject curricula in the Curriculum Database, October 1997
| complete school curricula | subject curricula | |||||||||||||||||||
|
|
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| complete general school curricula | 9 | 160 | ||||||||||||||||||
| general school curricula 'families' | 20 | 88 | ||||||||||||||||||
| unique general school curricula | - | 79 | ||||||||||||||||||
| vocational curricula for secondary vocational schools | 13 | 67 | ||||||||||||||||||
| general knowledge curricula for secondary vocational schools | - | 31 | ||||||||||||||||||
|
|
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| total | 42 | 425 | ||||||||||||||||||
Source: Curriculum Database.
Owing to the slow development of the curricular supply the Ministry of Culture and Education launched some new initiatives in spring 1997. The Ministry's foundation for the support of innovations, the Public Foundation for the Modernisation of School Education (KOMA), called for the applications of schools involved in development to prepare complete school curricula and transitional curricula in the traditional way. The local curricula of the nineteen selected schools were distributed in printed form among the county pedagogical institutes, where the schools could have access to them, together with the rest of the recommended curricula, free-of-charge. The majority of these documents were prepared by schools that had taken part in the Self-Developing Schools programme of the Soros Foundation and had learnt the techniques of curriculum development for the local level. The model curricula had versions for school grades 1-6, 1-8, 1-10, 6-12, 9-10, and 9-12.
The creation of the curricular supply ran parallel with the development of the information service system for the sector of school education. Such services were provided for the schools by the county pedagogical institutes from 1995 on, when mostly application and fund-raising possibilities were disseminated. To be able to serve this purpose the pedagogical institutes were provided with computers and Internet access by the Soros Foundation. The National Institute of Public Education (OKI) came to an agreement with the Soros Foundation that these computer systems at the county pedagogical institutes would also serve as bases for the information offices of the public education system. The OKI - besides supplying information - covered the operational costs of these service points or information offices. During 1996 the number of the service points was enlarged. Several schools undertook to provide access to the curricular databank 20 hours a week - in given opening hours - for those interested and only at a cost price. So the number of service points rose to 41. The curricula were available on computer discs, on a special software that allowed standardisation, in a Word file, or in printed or photocopied form. Besides having access to the curricular databank the schools and the maintainers received a lot of useful information at these service points about the implementation of the NCC. In addition, the periodical Új Pedagógiai Szemle (New Pedagogical Review) regularly published short summaries of the new curricula in its appendix.
The direct reliance on the tools of modern informatics and telecommunications in a nation-wide curricular reform is a unique phenomenon by international comparison. This form provides the information and professional materials needed for the local implementation of the reform for large numbers of users in a very cost-effective way. It also gives momentum to the use of informatics and network communication systems at the school level, the long-term impact of which is still hard to estimate. The curriculum development software allows the curricula to be of great variety but at the same time it ensures that they have a common base. It also helps the quality assurance of the curricula by establishing whether the unified criteria are met, such as the determination of educational objectives, a proper timing structure, the listing of applied textbooks and professional materials, and an overview of the teaching aids necessary for the realisation of the given curriculum. Applying up-to-date technology, however, brings about a lot of problems as well. One of the major concerns is that while the institutions and individuals who possess the technology have access to the necessary information and professional materials in the most effective way possible while those who do not are excluded from the processes. According to the surveys carried out teachers - especially primary teachers and teachers in rural schools - find the qualified curricula in the printed form more helpful than the electronic versions. One reason for this is highlighted by a survey carried out about the implementation of the NCC at the beginning of 1997, which revealed that 8.8% of the schools do not possess a computer and more than half of the institutional heads (50.7%) are not familiar with computers (Vágó, 1997a).
On the other hand there are serious professional questions to consider about the use of the modern tools and programmes of informatics when standardising the curricula. Behind every curriculum development software there is a learning and teaching philosophy which may limit the success of other approaches. Standardisation may exclude certain solutions that otherwise could prove viable in practice. Furthermore, some curriculum development workshops - not having accepted the standard criteria required by computerisation - could not join in the development of curricula, leading to a delay in its development. The curricula prepared in the traditional way and printed format following the KOMA applications mentioned above provided a good alternative in this respect as well.
The financial resources needed at the school-level for the development of the local curricula and for the preparation of the teachers were provided - as was mentioned in Chapter B on Educational policy, the administration and financing of education - by the central budget via direct applications during the course of 1997. In the same year the Ministry of Culture and Education issued a number of publications to provide information about, and to popularise, the implementation of the NCC, and sponsored media programmes that served to inform parents, students and teachers. The educational weekly, entitled Köznevelés, regularly published NAT-lap (the NCC Bulletin) as a supplement, which contained concrete pieces of information and recommendations for teachers. An NCC Calendar was also published to inform the schools and the maintainers about the tasks and their scheduling during the implementation of the NCC and the preparation of the local curricula. A thematic issue of the newspaper of the local governments (ÖN-KOR-KÉP) was published to provide detailed information for the local representatives and civil servants about their tasks concerning the NCC. The Ministry also sponsored a lot of regional or county level seminars and conferences about the implementation.
The implementation of the NCC at the level of the schools
According to the Public Education Act schools have to follow their own NCC-compatible pedagogical programmes and local curricula three years after the adoption of the NCC, namely in 1998. However, to be able to do so the maintainers, at least in theory, had to be acquainted with these documents no later than the end of 1997, in order to plan their 1998 budget. Consequently, the preparations for the development of the local curricula started in most institutions at the beginning of 1997. Thus the direct impact of the NCC was felt at the level of the schools much earlier than the terms laid down in the law. According to the NCC survey of 1997 the majority of general school heads (57%) already felt at the beginning of 1997 that the contents of education were determined by the NCC. The corresponding rate among secondary school heads was much lower: two-thirds of them said that the NCC had not yet had an impact on educational contents (Vágó, 1997a). In a public opinion poll among teachers (Liskó, 1997a) in April 1997 49% of the teachers said that the local curricula were under preparation, and 3% said they were in place. 41% of the school heads asked in the NCC survey said they were working on the local curricula, whereas 10% said that they were ready with the first version, and another 10% said they had finished preparing their local curricula.
The success of the implementation of the NCC will basically depend on the preparation of the local curricula on time and their being of appropriate quality. According to the 1997 NCC survey about one-third of the institutions had introduced some kind of innovation in the field of curricula before the NCC appeared. Thus, approximately this proportion of schools can be said to have some experience in local curriculum development or adaptation. This proportion was much lower in the case of the general schools (22%) than in the gymnasia (51%), and much more so in the secondary vocational schools (64%). Therefore, for most schools, the development of the local curricula meant a kind of task hardly ever encountered before. Despite this only a little more than one-fifth of them said at the beginning of 1997 that they would take ready-made, centrally recommended curricula, or borrow such curricula from other schools, without any local adaptation. The largest proportion, exactly two-thirds of all schools were planning to adapt curricula developed elsewhere to their own conditions. The proportion of schools planning to develop, and use exclusively, their own curricula amounted to some 11% (see Table 2). This is the estimated percentage of schools willing to engage in independent curriculum development.
School heads on the expected source of their local curriculum,
by type of school maintainer, 1997 (%)
| local government |
association of local governments |
county or Budapest government |
church | foundation | university, college |
total | ||||||||||||||
|
|
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| centrally recommended | 22.2 | 15.7 | 28.6 | 10.5 | 30 | 21.5 | ||||||||||||||
| adopted from another school | 0.2 | 2.0 | 2.7 | 0.4 | ||||||||||||||||
| adapted | 66.7 | 79.5 | 53.1 | 68.4 | 20 | 71.4 | 66.8 | |||||||||||||
| home-made | 10.8 | 4.8 | 14.3 | 18.4 | 50 | 28.6 | 11.3 | |||||||||||||
| number of schools (100%) | 815 | 83 | 49 | 38 | 10 | 7 | 1002 | |||||||||||||
Source: Vágó, 1997a.
The final versions of the local pedagogical programmes of the institutions of vocational education were scheduled to be prepared during the autumn and winter of 1997. The school heads of these institutions expected the biggest challenge to be over the ruling of the 1993 Public Education Act which said that vocational education could not commence before the end of the tenth grade. This ruling may cause serious, though transitory, employment problems among teachers of theoretical subjects, but especially among teachers of practical training. In extreme cases some vocational teachers may not be allocated classes at all for two years. Some schools may remedy this transitory and critical situation by turning their attention to adult vocational education, to training masters of trade or technicians but others may solve the situation through redundancy or making their vocational teachers - especially those of less popular trades - take early retirement.
In the sections below two important areas of the schools current work are going to be introduced in more detail.
Teaching foreign languages
Opposition to compulsory Russian language during the forty years of the Soviet bloc era, the closedness of the country, and the strong limitations on travel opportunities, used to hinder severely the development and strengthening of positive attitudes towards foreign language learning. There was no real motivation for students to learn foreign languages, nor for adults, because the acquired language skills were not much appreciated by the then Hungarian society. It is not surprising then that the foreign language knowledge of the adult Hungarian population is at a very low level. According to data published in the mid-1990s in 1994 32% of the Hungarian citizens older than 14 years of age could speak another language beside Hungarian. 11% knew two foreign languages and 3% knew three or more. Most of these people (17.3%) spoke German, followed by 11.5% English, 8.8% Russian and 2.2% French. Not counting people speaking a national minority language only 11.8% of people over 14 knew and used a foreign language at an acceptable level, 3.6% spoke two languages, and 0.8% spoke three or more. The past few years have seen an explosive growth in the field of foreign language teaching and learning. There is probably no other area in education to match the extent of development of this field.
In the school year of 1996/97 there were 668,819 pupils in the general schools learning a foreign language: 50.8% of them learnt English, 45.7% learnt German. At the general secondary school, the gymnasia, two languages are already taught in grade one (i.e. grade nine). At the secondary vocational schools two languages are rarely taught except for vocations that particularly require foreign language skills (tourism, catering, etc.). The learning of foreign languages has increased in the past few years. While the number of secondary school pupils rose only by 1.6% between 1992/93 and 1996/97 the number of foreign language lessons taught rose by 14.7%. The number of foreign languages learnt per one pupil rose from 1.25 to 1.42. But it is not only the proportion devoted to the teaching of foreign languages that has increased, the structure of teaching has also changed. Since 1989 the number of pupils in the general schools learning the Russian language has decreased from 62% to below 2% while the number of those learning a Western European language has risen from 38% to 98%. The two major languages - German and English - with their combined proportion of 96.5% oust almost every other language. The leading position among the foreign languages is taken by the German language in the general schools and by the English language in the secondary schools (see Figure 1).
Percentages of pupils learning foreign languages in the 8-grade general schools and in secondary schools
Source: Calculations based on the educational statistics of the Ministry of Education. Note: Pupils learning several foreign languages count as several pupils in this figure.
The National Core Curriculum and the teaching of foreign languages. The NCC - compared to the 1978 central curriculum formerly in force - has determined a new time framework for the teaching of foreign languages, entailing two major changes. On the one hand, the beginning of foreign language learning has moved from grade 4 to grade 5. On the other hand, the academic timetable is determined in a flexible way: both more and fewer lessons can be devoted to the teaching of foreign languages (see Table 3).
Number of annual timetable allocated to foreign languages at the 8-grade general school, by the 1978 Curriculum and by the National Core Curriculum
| grade 4 | grade 5 | grade 6 | grade 7 | grade 8 | total | |||||||||||||||
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| by the 1978 Curriculum | 64 | 96 | 96 | 96 | 96 | 448 | ||||||||||||||
| minimum annual timetable by the NCC | 96 | 94 | 85.5 | 85.5 | 359 | |||||||||||||||
| maximum annual timetable by the NCC | 128 | 128 | 114 | 114 | 484 | |||||||||||||||
Source: Vágó, 1997b.
It is unknown at present what kind of decisions are reached within the schools, and between the schools and their maintainers, concerning the number of lessons devoted to foreign language teaching during the preparation of the schools local curricula and pedagogical programmes. Some analysts fear that the number of such lessons will diminish. Others argue that there is no real danger since - according to experiences gained so far - the pressure from parents will force the schools to allocate the maximum number of lessons to this cultural domain of the NCC. It is possible though that in the lower cycle of the general school the maintainers of rural schools will not be able to finance early foreign language teaching. Though compulsory foreign language learning today starts in grade 4 there are some one hundred thousand primary school pupils learning a foreign language already in the earlier grades. If - in accordance with the NCC - the teaching of foreign languages were started everywhere in grade 5 the number of primary school pupils learning a foreign language would decrease by two hundred thousand.
Informatics education
For the past few years the development of informatics education and the connecting of schools into the global telecommunication networks have been a high priority in the contents modernisation of school education. The Ministry of Culture and Education called for applications (called the Secondary Schools Internet Project) in spring 1997 to support the schools connection in the global computer networks. Within the framework of this informatics development programme each secondary school and independent secondary student hostel received a computer network together with full-scale Internet access.
The maintainers of the general schools could also apply for developmental funds but they were compelled to contribute to the planned development with their own share and they were only granted support if they had some informatics development conception formulated. The interest of the maintainers in this field was very high: all together they offered almost as large an amount (1.54 billion HUF) as the total of the centrally earmarked support for this purpose (1.6 billion HUF).
The development of informatics education is also supported by the central educational policy via teachers in-service training: 30-35% of the grants earmarked for inset are meant for training in the field of computer studies. The institutions that have volunteered to offer in-service training in this field and to follow the thematic guidelines issued by the Ministry of Education are forecast to train some 1000-1500 teachers within three years. It is not only universities and colleges that have volunteered but also secondary schools and pedagogical institutes as well, of which the latter will function all over the country as the reference centres for in-service training in informatics.
As far as the use of computers is concerned the supply of the tools of informatics at the disposal of teachers in schools is very poor, the market of informatics does not yet feel the pressure of demand. The teaching of foreign languages is the only field where there are a number of programmes to be used. However, the majority of teachers do not, or cannot, use them and most schools have difficulties when it comes to the purchase of these programmes. So in the everyday life of schools the use of computer technologies is very far from the potentials that lie in the spreading of these tools.
One of the main objectives of the informatics development programme is to integrate the separate local systems into a full-scale public education network, a special intranet system. This would help ensure the provision of various educational services for all teachers and schools. It could help spread the new methodologies of teaching the general knowledge subjects or could help access the documents that teachers could use when developing their own curricula, such as multi-media materials for topics to be dealt with in lessons. In order to develop the supply of these materials there were several calls for applications during the course of 1997 to develop materials which teachers can use when teaching their subjects or which students can use to obtain and process the information they need when dealing with a study area.
Besides its direct use in the classrooms, informatics is expected to contribute to the modernisation of public education in other fields as well. For example, the administration of public education can be made more efficient (it can make school administration easier, it can assist in the solution of regional tasks or tasks connected with the realisation of the county development plans, it can help in the execution of local administrative tasks, such as the checking of compulsory schooling or assisting parents and students in the selection of a school). Informatics can greatly improve the operation of public educational information services (such as public educational statistics, the tasks of measuring and evaluation, informatics services in the field of examinations or career orientation). Informatics can also support the development of the electronic market in education (distance learning, professional in-service training, curriculum services, etc.).
The success of the developmental programmes in the field of informatics education largely depends on whether teachers and other actors in education fully realise the importance of information technologies. There is also a large stake in the development of teaching and learning multi-media materials - of a proper quantity and quality - from which teachers can choose according to their system of values.
2. The developing system of examinations
One of the most important elements of the reform of contents regulation in Hungary is the transformation of the system of examinations. Ever since the launching of the reform there has been a fairly high consensus that a much greater importance has to be given to output control and within this to examinations. The consensus has been much weaker among the various professional groups as to what type of examinations should be organised, at which points of the education system, and for which student groups. It was the 1993 Public Education Act that introduced the type of examination (the fundamental knowledge examination) that is to be taken at the end of grade 10 either at a general school or at a secondary school but only by those students who start their sixth grade studies in the school year following the publication of the examination requirements. Formerly there used to be only one type of examination - except for the vocational examinations - in the Hungarian school system: the school-leaving final examinations at the end of (upper) secondary schooling. The legal regulations of the fundamental knowledge examination were formulated in June 1997, almost two years after the adoption of the National Core Curriculum. The reform of the school leaving examination was ruled about by the 1996 Amendment to the Public Education Act and the related detailed regulations were also adopted in June 1997.
2.1. The new fundamental knowledge examination
The fundamental knowledge examination is an altogether novel element of the system of content regulation in Hungarian public education. It is a state examination that has to be taken according to nationally unified requirements based on the National Core Curriculum. Students may take this examination upon the completion of the requirements of their studies in grade ten. Taking the examination is not compulsory yet the schools are compelled to create the possibility of taking this exam if there is a demand for it. The examination certificate entitles the holder to enter the forms of vocational training that are laid down in the regulations and to engage in certain types of employment or activities.
There has been a great deal of debate accompanying the elaboration and the regulation of the fundamental knowledge examination. According to its opponents it is inadvisable to introduce an element of output control at a point where there is no strict division between two educational cycles in most schools. Another group of opponents argue that raising compulsory schooling to the age of 18 will lead to the 12-year-long schooling becoming general, which may make the examination placed at the current end of compulsory schooling superfluous. Its supporters on the other hand argue that the fundamental knowledge examination in itself will contribute to the extension of general schooling from the present 8 grades to 10 grades, and it will transform the tenth grade of studies into the completion phase of general basic education in accordance with the NCC even if almost all young people decide to continue with their studies - mainly in vocational education - after this grade.
The detailed conception of the fundamental knowledge examination was prepared in 1996 by a professional workshop, the Fundamental Knowledge Examination Centre, in Szeged after years of preparation. In the same year the general requirements of the examination were also laid down by the subject committees appointed by the Centre and these requirements - similarly to the general conception of the examination - were also opened up to debate. The final version of the requirements of the examination was issued - at the same time with the Regulation of the School Leaving Examination - in a ministerial decree in May 1997.3 The examination will be introduced from 2002 onwards. Any cultural domain of the NCC can become an examination subject. In order to obtain the certificate altogether six examinations have to be passed by those applying, three of which are compulsory subjects, and three are optional. The mode of the examination may be oral, written or practical.
It is important to mention that concerning the examination requirements the debate is being continued between those who represent the integrative approach of the NCC and those who favour the traditional subject approach. It is also disputed at what level the minimum requirements of the fundamental knowledge examination should be drawn. Some argue that the attainment of some proportion of the minimum requirements of the NCC should be sufficient since the examination will serve as an entry to vocations of lesser rank. Others say that the examination may soon become wide-spread so the requirements should be set with this in mind. The future of the fundamental knowledge examination will largely depend on the proportion of secondary students applying to take it and on the schools - if there are going to be any - that require the passing of this exam as a prerequisite for progress within the system.
2.2. The new regulations of the school leaving examination
As was indicated before, a greatly increased annual number of students had been taking the school leaving examination by the mid-1990s and, due to the continuous expansion of secondary schooling, the school leaving final examination can be expected to become generally taken in the future. Because of these developments the current character, role, content and function of the school leaving examination are under review these days. The school leaving examination is gradually becoming a multi-function completion action of secondary education fulfilling functions such as the output control of educational contents, the foundation for vocational education, preparation for higher educational studies, a selection filtering process for higher education, and a kind of initiation ritual" on entering adult life.
The professional conception of the reform of the school leaving examination was elaborated by an expert committee commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Education in spring 1995. The conception consisted of several possible variations but each of them emphasised that students should be granted a bigger choice of examination subjects and greater freedom in choosing from among them, and that examinations in the particular subjects should be organised at two levels (at the normal or intermediate level and at the advanced level). The reform also proposed that the vocational foundation subjects taught at the secondary vocational schools should also become electable examination subjects, and that a national level standardisation should be sought in the written parts of the examination. There were bigger differences among the proposal variations in the following respects: to what extent the preparations for the school leaving examination should determine the pedagogical organisation of the completion cycle of secondary education, and to what degree should students be given freedom when electing their examination subjects.
The strongest reactions in the ensuing public debate centred on the freedom of choice of subjects. The question whether the subject of history should remain a compulsory examination subject even led to a Parliamentary debate. A fairly large proportion of secondary schools expressed their doubts about the two levels of the examination. It required a longer period for both the professional and the general public to realise that the proposal was for the two levels of the individual subjects and not for the examination as a whole. It was also the reform of school leaving examination that provoked the most debates before the amendment of the public education act in 1996.
The Regulation of the school leaving examination was adopted by the government in June 1997. The first examinations that reflect the new regulations are going to be organised in 2004. The Regulation will have a direct controlling impact on the completion cycle of secondary education in 2002 but its influence will be felt much before, during the preparation of the schools pedagogical programmes and local curricula. The most important elements of the new regulation are the following. The new school leaving examination will have two levels, i.e. the examinations in the individual subjects can be taken either at the intermediate or at the advanced level. There will be five compulsory examination subjects to be passed at least at the intermediate level. Four of these subjects are determined by the Regulation, the fifth is an electable subject. The compulsory subjects are: Hungarian language and literature, history, mathematics, and a foreign language. In minority education examination in the mother tongue and literature is also compulsory. The Regulation also lays down the most important rules of taking the examination. The general requirements of the individual examination subjects have been published as an appendix to the Regulation. They describe in detail what attainment targets the students have to reach if they wish to take an intermediate or an advanced level examination in a subject. With this the Regulation of the school leaving examination has become a document of content regulation - like the National Core Curriculum for the first ten years of schooling - for the completion cycle of secondary education.
According to the new examination regulation the written examination consists of completing centrally issued (standardised) test sheets. The test sheets are marked by the subject teachers with the help of keys provided centrally. The Minister of Education may rule that the test sheets of certain examination subjects from certain types of schools, from given towns or regions, or even from the whole country, be marked at the future national school leaving examination centres. The theses of the oral examination are prepared by the subject teacher in the case of an intermediate level examination and by the national school leaving examination centre in case of an advanced exam. The oral examination is open to the public but the president of the examination committee may limit this. In a practical examination the rules of the written examination apply if the solution of the examination assignment happens in a recorded form (e.g. a drawing, writing out in a score, an industrial design, a computer programme). And the rules of the oral examination apply if the assignment has to be shown or performed on one occasion (singing, a gymnastic exercise, etc.) A student reaches the attainment targets of the school leaving examination if he/she obtains a minimum of mark 2 (sufficient or pass) in each part of each examination subject.
3. Textbooks, teaching aids
It is well-known that the contents of school education are mostly governed by the textbooks and teaching aids used in schools. Textbooks will remain among the most important tools that determine educational contents in the implementation phase of the National Core Curriculum in the second half of the 1990s even though their importance seems to be on the wane as compared to the other tools of educational contents regulation.
The textbook market: supply, demand and market actors
After the state monopoly of textbook publication was abolished and the state was no longer compelled to provide the schools with textbooks market-based textbook publication and sales developed within a fairly short time in the first half of the 1990s. The 1993 Act on Public Education made it the teachers' right to choose the textbooks, teaching aids and equipment to be used in their teaching. The fast growth of the demand was also fed by the practice that a significant proportion of teachers liked to try several new publications in their subjects. In the first half of the decade there were a lot of schools where there were 3 or 4 textbooks used in parallel in one class, sometimes ones following different pedagogical models. By the middle of the decade the teachers' right to choose, which had a great impact on the demand, was re-regulated. The 1996 Amendment of the Act ruled that the teachers could choose a textbook in accordance with the local curriculum of their school and after consulting their colleagues in the department. The ruling that the teaching staff has to make decisions about the textbooks and teaching aids used in the school during the adoption process of the pedagogical programme also calls for reaching a professional agreement among the staff.
A large number of public educational institutions have renewed their textbooks in the past few years. According to the 1997 NCC survey in average 52% of the general knowledge textbooks and 64% of the foreign language textbooks had been replaced by new ones in the schools. The 1200 school heads asked predicted that a further 42% of the general knowledge textbooks and some 30% of the foreign language textbooks were going to be replaced in the coming two-three years.
The development of the textbook market supply can be estimated on the basis of the textbook register issued yearly by the Textbooks and Teaching Aids Office of the Ministry of Education.
The increase of the number of textbooks registered annually shows that the growth of the supply continued dynamically through the middle of the decade. There were 2480 approved titles registered for the school year of 1997/98, which meant that the general schools could select from 28% more general knowledge textbooks and 74% more foreign language textbooks than a year before. The number of religious textbooks published by the churches rose significantly, too, with the Calvinist Church being particularly active in this field. The growth of supply was most dynamic in the publishing of foreign language textbooks and teaching aids.
The richness of the choice and the long route taken from the one-textbook world" to a supply market are best illustrated by the number of textbooks per individual subjects. The choice - reflecting the beginning of the pedagogical cycles and the transformation of the school structure - is widest in grades 1, 5 and 7. But there are a lot of textbooks to choose from, various textbooks that convey roughly the same cultural contents, at the other grades as well, which are a bit less favoured by textbook developers. (See Figure 2.) The enrichment of the textbook supply is to be thanked for the professional workshops, most of which operate at, or co-operate with, developmental schools.
Number of textbooks per statutory subjects by grades, 1989/90-1997/98
Source: Vágó, 1997c.
It is important to point out that textbook provision in vocational education follows a completely different mechanism from that of general education. While general education is characterised by market-governed publication and distribution in vocational education it is the various sectoral ministries that are responsible for the provision of non-general knowledge, vocational textbooks. The Ministry of Labour used to be responsible for the provision of some 70% of the vocational textbooks. Due to the wide range of vocations (after the 1996 modification of the National Training Register there were 933 recognised vocations) the institutions of vocational education use a growing number of textbooks year after year. There were 3093 kinds of vocational textbooks in use in 1997. The number of copies of these textbooks is rather small so their production is extremely costly.
The most important means of the state control and of the professional orientation of the textbook market is the regulatory right of the Minister of Education, as is laid down in the Public Education Act. According to the Act it is the responsibility of the Minister to regulate the order of textbook approval, the preparation and publication of the textbook register, the removal of textbooks from the register and the order of supporting textbook publication. The Act determines the contents requirements and the technical conditions of approving of a textbook, and makes it the right of the National Educational Policy Council (OKNT) to recommend the adoption of a book into the textbook register. This task is carried out within the OKNT by a professional committee which comprises of members of the OKNT and of external experts appointed by the body.
The official textbook register is one of the most important means of regulating the textbook market despite the fact that following register is not compulsory. Teachers are free to use any publication that is not listed in the register yet experiences have shown that the textbook register is of determining importance for all actors of the textbook market. The Ministry of Education partly functions as an authority in this respect because it approves the textbooks. But it is also a provider of certain services: a package is mailed by the Ministry to every school at the beginning of the calendar years which contains the textbook register appropriate for the level of school, the list of foreign language textbooks, the list of teaching aids available, the address lists of textbook publishers and sales agents, the advertising materials of the publishers and their order forms. The mediating role of the state ends at this point, and the schools send their orders directly to the publishers.
For the school year of 1997/98 134 publishers had some 2700 titles on the Ministry's register, which indicates that the number of publishers dealing with textbooks has doubled since 1995. In that school year there were 30 textbook development workshops listed in the register which did not have an approved textbook the year before.
Textbook prices and textbook financing
Between 1996 and 1997 the average price of textbooks rose by 22%, which roughly equalled the annual rate of inflation. Textbooks for the general school tend to be significantly cheaper (by almost 27%) than the textbooks prepared and registered for the secondary schools, and the price rise of the former is usually lower (17%) than that of the secondary textbooks (25%). The foreign language textbooks continue to be the most expensive.
The price of the textbooks are partly covered by the central budget, partly by the parents. The proportion of the grants earmarked for textbook support within the central budget (1.3 HUF in 1997) tends to decrease as compared to the contribution by the families. The universal per capita textbook support of 1994 (when it was 860 HUF per pupil irrespective of the school type) became differentiated in 1997. In the secondary schools it decreased in real value (1140 HUF), in the general schools it decreased in nominal value as well (760 HUF). As a result the contribution of the families had to increase: while in 1994 the proportion paid by the families was around 60%, by 1997 this rate rose to around 80%. The layer of parents who can pay seem to have accepted the situation that they have to cover a growing proportion of the price of their children's textbooks. But at the local governmental level we can witness that one form of social welfare support for the poorest families is characteristically the purchase of textbooks and exercise books for the children, besides covering the costs of their daily meals. In the light of this it is a rather controversial practice that schools consider textbook selection an exclusively professional task and do not usually involve the actual financiers, the parents, into the decision-making.
Since 1993, the publishers of registered textbooks have enjoyed a state guarantee for their short term loans in proportion with the number of textbook orders they receive. This regulation has enabled publishers professionally successful (registered) but in need of capital to enter the textbook market by bridging the period between the placement of the orders (1 January) and payments for the textbooks (1 October) and has thus helped the strengthening of the smaller publishers that specialise in textbooks. The viability of the financial construction is proved by the fact that until 1996 there was only one publisher that could not pay off its textbook loan.
The task of acquainting teachers with the ever growing textbook supply was allocated to the county pedagogical institutes by the 1996 Amendment to the Public Education Act. Professional organisations also play an important role in textbook marketing. One of these organisations is TANOSZ, the National Alliance of Textbook Publishers, which regularly organises textbook exhibitions, textbook shows with demonstrations and professional seminars. But the pedagogical periodicals still fail to publish good quality and regular textbook reviews. The Soros Foundation sponsors the publication of Tandem, a periodical of textbook criticism, but this publication does not yet have a good circulation and is mostly not known by the users of schools.
Teaching aids
According to the 1997 NCC survey the schools are well-equipped with those aids that were considered most modern at the introduction of the 1978 central curriculum (overhead projectors, slide projectors, colour televisions). But there are shortages in the currently up-to-date tools of the information technologies and in the teaching aids that can assist in conveying the educational contents required by the National Core Curriculum. However, the secondary schools, as was mentioned before, are fairly well equipped with the up-to-date tools of informatics.
Up till recently the model of being provided with the appropriate teaching aids meant a nationally unified curriculum, a uniform use of teaching aids, and centrally-financed development and provision. The latest teaching aids register listed the necessary and the accepted aids but also laid down the normatives, i.e. how many of what aid per school, per class or pupil had to be available. The central budget used to guarantee that all schools were uniformly provided with these aids. This system collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s. And while the curriculum and textbook market reflecting the new contents regulations seems to grow stronger the launching of the market of teaching aids is lagging behind and looks like a long-term task. Domestic producers are scared away by the size of capital needed, which is inproportionately larger than the capital investment required in textbook publishing, and foreign producers are not much attracted by the small-scale Hungarian market. The role of the state in this respect, and the ensuing consequences for the central budget, have not been formulated yet except perhaps for the development in the field of information technologies.
The 1996 Amendment of the Public Education Act made it the responsibility of the Minister of Education to publish the teaching aids register, the items of which should be possessed by each school. After lengthy professional debates a new teaching aids list was drawn up in 1997 which is better adjusted to the demands of a framework-type curriculum regulation. The list contains the widest circle of aids that ensure that pupils can reach the attainment targets of the curriculum. This so-called functional teaching aids register does not actually list concrete teaching aids but rather the educational tasks the fulfilment of which requires certain aids or tools. A given educational function cannot only be served by one concrete aid, since there might be several suitable ones. Some of the aids are cheaper or simpler, others are more durable or more pleasing to look at, etc., so the autonomous schools and teachers will be able to choose from them according to their needs or means. Expert opinions say that the functional teaching aids register will first of all inform the producers and sales agents about the expected demands of the following years and will guide them in deciding where to concentrate their developments.
The new teaching aids register was opened to comments and criticism in spring 1997 for the professional organisations of teachers, for the organisations of parents and students, for the alliances of the local governments, and the organisations of the teaching aids producers and marketers. Considering the novelty of the document it is not surprising that some of those affected received this teaching aids list of a completely new character with reservations. The doubtful saw the functional list as too abstract and unsuitable for the launching of the development and they feared it would not be able to fulfil its regulatory functions. Those with a positive opinion argued that a different list would be hard to imagine amidst the current conditions of school autonomy and loose central regulation of educational contents.
4. Pupil attainment
How to evaluate the effectiveness of education has become the major concern of education in Hungary in the past few years. We have to know that effectiveness is an extremely complex concept and there are a variety of ways to measure it. The effectiveness of education is most often monitored by measuring educational achievement. Control itself has a variety of forms: measuring with standardised tests, competitions, students olympics, monitoring the rates that indicate how many students of the secondary schools are admitted to higher education, etc. But schools also fulfil a large number of tasks the effectiveness of which is hard to measure exactly, such as the integration of disadvantaged social groups, the education of citizens and communities for life etc. In the sections below we are going to describe the effectiveness of Hungarian schools basically with the help of the measurement of educational achievements through standardised tests.
The measuring of educational achievements and their change in time
The measuring of educational achievements in subjects with the aid of standardised tests have been carried out in Hungary since the 1970s. The first measurements were carried out under the aegis of an international organisation, the IEA4, but since the middle of the 1980s there have been regular measurements carried out with measurement tools developed in Hungary and to serve domestic purposes. The first such measurement, generally called the Monitor survey, was carried out in 1986. There were four consecutive occasions, in 1991, 1993, 1995 and 1997, when data collection took place5. On every occasion the sample comprised of 150 general and secondary schools in local governmental maintenance, where a randomly chosen student group filled in the tests in every grade. It is important to stress that there are no measurements that extend to all schools and all pupils in Hungary. Since the measurement of educational achievements with standardised tests and with samples of pupils and schools are based on very complex methodological solutions the generalisations of these measurements findings for the whole of public education have to be treated extremely carefully, with strict respect to the norms of scientific research. These reservations are recommended to be born in mind when the findings of the Monitor surveys are considered below.
The change in educational achievements over time can be illustrated in the most reliable way by the rates of achievement of the so-called bridge tasks of the Monitor surveys. These are unchanged tasks that have to be solved by pupils during two consecutive surveys. The average rate of pupils solving the bridge tasks successfully decreased heavily between 1991 and 1995, especially in reading comprehension. The tendency of deteriorating achievements was broken between 1995 and 1997. The rate of those solving the tasks successfully, again especially in reading comprehension, increased a little. But in the case of certain pupil populations the achievements in mathematics declined.
Besides reading and mathematics the 1995 and 1997 Monitor surveys also examined pupil knowledge in the fields of informatics and natural sciences. The findings in natural sciences showed a rather mixed picture: 4th graders achieved much worse and 8th graders achieved much better in 1997 than in 1995. There was hardly any difference between the results of the 10th graders in 1997 and their results of two years before. The picture was varied in the field of informatics as well. The achievement of the 8th graders improved considerably, that of 10th graders diminished dramatically, and there was hardly any change during the two years in the achievement of 12th graders. This may lead to drawing the conclusion that the increased interests that used to characterise the 16-year-old age cohort appear at an earlier age today and by the time pupils reach grade 10 these interests decline.
Differences between cities, towns and villages
Educational achievements show a strong correlation with the schools' site of operation. The lower we descend in the size of settlements the lower is the educational attainment produced by the schools. What is even more worrying is that the differences that have always existed between the various settlement types have widened gradually for the past few years. This can be exemplified by the period between 1995 and 1997. The opening of the gap between the various settlement types is extremely strong in the case of 8th graders and with respect to achievements in reading (see Figure 3). This also means that the statement we made above about the halt or slowing down in the deterioration of educational achievements is only valid for the capital: there is stagnation or a little decrease in county seats, but in smaller towns and especially in villages the educational achievements have actually strongly deteriorated. Similar correlation has been found in natural sciences and informatics and, what is more, even in cognitive tests. If we make an overall comparison of the achievements of 4th, 6th, and 8th graders we can see - besides finding that the ranking mentioned above is confirmed by every test - that the differences are growing, i.e. from the two determining factors, school and settlement type, the latter is proved to be the stronger.
8th graders' achievement in reading, measured in standardised scores, by settlement category, 1991, 1995, 1997
Source: Vári, 1997.
By surveying and comparing the individual knowledge areas - though roughly the same correlation prevails - we can formulate a more differentiated picture about the differences between the settlement types. For example in grade 4 the gap is smallest in natural sciences and biggest in reading comprehension. In grade 6 the advantage of Budapest pupils is smallest in natural sciences: it is the village pupils who achieve relatively better in this field. In grade 8 the biggest gap can be found in reading, the smallest in natural sciences (see Figure 4). The gap between the settlement types is generally wide but its width is not the same in every knowledge area. Besides the lagging behind of village pupils there is another interesting finding to point out. The achievement of pupils at county seats remains much less below that of the pupils in Budapest than the achievement of pupils in other towns. This is especially the case in grade 8, which exemplifies that the chances for further studies are strongly determined by the place of residence. While in the capital or at county seats (in cities) pupils can continue their education without leaving their homes, that is they have hardly any new costs to bear when they choose from several secondary general or vocational schools, these possibilities are much more limited in other towns. So further studies mean a much weaker motivation factor - both probably for the pupils and the teachers - in smaller towns than at county seats.
Differences in the attainment of 8th graders by settlement type and subject, 1997
Source: Vári, 1997.
Differences between school types
An examination of the differences between the various school types is possible in the 10th and 12th grade students (who attend secondary schools). The differences in the achievements of 10th graders attending different school types are not only large but have also grown in the past two years (see Figure 5). Listing the gymnasium, the secondary vocational school and the technical school in this order continues to express the ranking of these schools with respect to the achievements of their students in every knowledge area as well. Students of the secondary vocational schools are closer to the gymnasium students than to technical school students. In standard scores the difference between gymnasium students and secondary vocational school students is usually 40 points, while the difference between secondary vocational school students and technical school students is usually 90-100 points. Behind the average scores of the school types there is, of course, a wide variation. One of the characteristics of Hungarian public education - striking even by international comparison - is that the differences are very big between institutions belonging to the same category. This statement is valid for all school types but especially for gymnasia. The Monitor surveys have confirmed that the term gymnasium refers to very different institutions in Hungary.
10th graders' achievement in reading, measured in standardised scores, by school type, 1995 and 1997
Source: Vári, 1997.
Differences between the sexes
In the majority of cases boys' achievements surpass those of girls but not everywhere and not to the same extent. With 4 graders there is practically no difference between the achievement of boys and girls in reading comprehension: girls are better in comprehending stories, boys are better at explanatory texts, while there is no difference between their achievements at document type texts. The girls' achievement in this grade both in mathematical thinking and in natural science thinking is a little better than that of the boys. In grades 6 and 8 the achievement of girls in reading and text comprehension is definitely better than that of the boys. In mathematics and science the same tendency prevails as in grade 4: girls continue to be at an advantage. But by grade 8 the tendency gets reversed: boys become better achievers. So there is a kind of polarisation to be observed: the occasional differences between boys and girls at the initial phase become clearer by grade 8. In reading comprehension it is always the girls who are better but in every other area, including informatics, boys do better.
In grade 10 (secondary level) the advantage of girls in reading comprehension grows further: their average achievement reaches 61.2% as opposed to the 56.1% of the other sex. But here we have to take into account that there are traditionally more boys in technical schools and more girls in the gymnasia. In grade 12, where there are no technical school students, the overall achievements of the two sexes almost equal each other: girls here are still better at stories while boys achieve better with the other two types of texts. In mathematics boys in grade 10 are a little better than girls but by grade 12 their advantage over girls becomes significant (59.7% for boys, 50.9% for girls). This is most certainly connected with the practice of a much bigger proportion of boys continuing their higher studies at institutions where mathematics skills play an important role (e.g. technical colleges and universities). In natural science test scores boys have a large advantage over girls already in grade 10, and this advantage grows by grade 12 (80.3% for boys, 71.8% for girls). This phenomenon can again be explained by the differences between boys and girls in choosing their higher education field. The boys' advantage in information science is fairly large over girls in every age group.