Education in Hungary 2000

Chapter 9 - Special Needs in Education

In school education there are several student groups whose education must take place based on an individual curriculum, particular pedagogical principles and in many cases applying special education organising devices. Public education assumes a special responsibility related to the education of these groups, which responsibility is recorded clearly in a set of Hungarian laws. Two such groups of students in Hungary duly deserve distinguished attention: the handicapped and children belonging to ethnic minorities.

9.1 The Education of Handicapped Children

The various categories of deficiencies related to special medical or educational responsibilities are itemised in Hungarian legal regulations. However, the borderlines dividing classes defined in accordance with different kinds of deficiencies frequently appear to be indistinct. In 1986 national and county level committees were established to assess physical and mental handicaps, sensory or speech impediments. National boards of experts deal with the examination of visual, hearing and speech abilities. Examining and supervising professional boards are operated in the capital as well as at the county level. These committees consist of teachers of the handicapped and leaders with such degrees, psychologists and medical specialists. The committees form their opinions regarding the examined handicapped child which serve as a base for recommending possibilities for his/her positioning in school or nursery school. Educational Counselling Services operate in each district of the capital and in every major town on an outpatient basis with a mission to explore, diagnose and surmount problems in the behaviour, education and learning process of children under family care between the age of 3 and 18.

Professional services for speech therapy function in divisions according to districts in the capital and to regions in the country where those with speech impediments may receive individual or group therapy. Boards of teachers of the handicapped might decide not only on sending children to special classes but also on transferring children from special classes into normal ones. On the other hand, according to the provisions of the 1998 Act on Equal Opportunities, parents of handicapped children do have the right to decide which of the offered institutions shall educate their children.

Early development is of key importance in the case of handicapped children. The teachers of the handicapped have two types of responsibility: one is counselling in reference to the problems of the parents and the direct environment of the child, the other concerns the control of a deficiency-specific improvement. As a travelling educator, the teacher of the handicapped in charge of the controlled counselling and specific development personally visits the family home or the parents attend the counselling service with their child.

The Educational System for the Handicapped

The nursery schools and primary schools for the handicapped - complete with accommodation in a students’ dormitory or day-care services - are educational institutions dealing with those ‘teachable’ children with special needs aged 3-16 who entered the institutional system. Additionally, certain normal nursery and primary schools also have groups, classes or divisions for the education of the handicapped (for children with speech impediments or with slight mental deficiencies, in particular). Those handicapped of kindergarten or school age whose personality development might be optionally arranged, with special educational help, within nursery or primary schools may pursue their studies fully or in a partially integrated manner with other children. This form of teaching, however, is currently less typical. The general practice in primary school education is special schools or school classes for the children and youth with deficiencies. In the scholastic year of 1998/99 approximately 200 institutions and 481 primary school divisions were engaged in the education of handicapped school-age children, these were attended by 44 339 pupils. 0.5% of nursery school children, 3.35% of pupils in primary schools and 0.87% of those in secondary schools attend institutions for the handicapped. Approximately 12 000 children receive speech therapy. In accordance with the Public Education Act parents are entitled to choose the educational institution on the basis of an expert opinion given by the Expertise and Rehabilitation Committee for the examination of learning abilities and by the National Expertise and Rehabilitation Committee. However, the parents’ freedom of choice is somewhat restricted by the act as well, since it declares that handicapped students may only enrol in educational institutions that have the necessary staff and funds for this special form of education.

Normal and special forms of school education converge in several respects. While designing their programmes, the institutions participating in the education of the handicapped are obliged to take into consideration the principles issued with reference to the education of children with deficiencies. In public education (apart from special schools educating the mentally handicapped) education is performed along a largely common curriculum regulated by the National Core Curriculum. This enables handicapped children to complete primary school studies and to further continue their studies in secondary or higher education. Each school or other educational institution for the handicapped has the right to decide which methods they regard most sufficient to use in the process of education and care. Education in school classes with a small number of students appears typical, however, individual (speech therapeutic) or individual and small group corrective activities are also widely practised. Handicapped students usually receive a final school-leaving certificate identical with that of able students. There are a total of
2 500-3 000 children with visual, hearing or speech impediments, motor and complex deficiencies, and nine or ten times as many students attending schools for the mentally handicapped. This number includes 90% of those who attend schools for children with slight mental deficiencies or separate special classes in primary schools. This rate is regarded as an exceptionally high proportion even in an international comparison.

The high proportion of pupils with a slight mental deficiency or, in other terms, children with slight learning difficulties in Hungary might be explained with differences in definition. One reason is that a large number of Gypsy children are directed to special schools, another is that, in lack of sufficient conditions, institutions with normal curricula are unable to admit these pupils. For most handicapped children the possibility of continuing their studies in secondary or even in higher education is rather limited.

Teacher Training in the Education of the Handicapped

Teachers for the handicapped are trained in a four-year programme of Bárczi Gusztáv Teacher Training College for Teachers of the Handicapped, in Budapest. From January 2000 the college functions as the Faculty of Education for the Handicapped within the ELTE (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest). The training is organised in majors according to the main deficiency groups. Another prestigious institution that trains experts (so-called conductors) to deal with the physically handicapped is the Hungarian Pető Institute. It has been observed in many cases that regular teachers and teachers of the handicapped should obtain each others’ degrees as a second diploma in the related fields through post-graduate training. Institutions for the education of the handicapped, especially in rural areas, struggle with a significant shortage of experts.

Possibilities for Integration

A distinctive feature of the education of the handicapped is the fact that the Hungarian school system tends to educate pupils with deficiencies in strongly specialised and isolated institutions. While in several other countries some pupils with slight mental deficiencies are taught in normal classes, this is virtually non-existent in Hungary. In primary education separate institutions function for the blind and the visually challenged, for pupils with hearing impediments, physical and mental deficiencies. These isolated schools - while performing their educational duties at sufficient, or rather, excellent standards - often hinder the social integration of their students. Work-related and other social consequences of educational isolation are obvious for the handicapped. Still, there is no general agreement on the integration of children with a slight deficiency in Hungary. A major difficulty hindering such a consensus is the fact that normal educational institutions, from many aspects, are not yet capable of achieving the professional standards of institutions specialised for the education of the handicapped.

One of the most important new objective of the education of the handicapped is to help the handicapped individual in adapting to a normal society at school, in workplaces and in other fields of life. This aim will make it necessary in the future to establish a harmonised development in the integrated work of teachers and teachers of the handicapped. The 1998 Act of Equal Opportunities contains specific regulations in this respect - though allowing for a due time of notice - declaring that if it is beneficial from the point of view of the development of the handicapped child’s skills he/she should be educated in a common class or group together with other children. One of the most problematic elements in the school training of children with slight mental deficiencies is the selection and counter-selection functioning at school. In teaching the mentally handicapped, social problems are often mistaken for educational problems. According to schooling data, 90% of the handicapped attend schools for the mentally handicapped, whereas a mere 8% of all the handicapped are registered as individuals with a mental defection. Official numeric statistics regarding the number and proportion of the handicapped also make it clear that individuals with slight mental deficiencies, as they step into adulthood, are absorbed in the society of the able to such an extent that a significant proportion of them can no longer be identified as handicapped. Besides legal regulations, there is still a lot to be done in order to provide the appropriate conditions of integrated education. Such means are the establishment of pedagogic methods for integrated education, the introduction of training integrative teachers, the development of new educational training types in order to raise awareness and increase the social sensitivity of the teachers as well as new financial incentives.

Teachers specialised in the given type of deficiency or perhaps travelling teachers might assist teachers engaged in the integrated education of handicapped children. In the early 1990s the admission of handicapped children into normal schools started to gain ground spontaneously, mainly due to demographic and financial reasons. This spontaneous integration is called ’austere integration’ since these schools usually lack the technical, pedagogic and concept-related conditions for the joint education of able and handicapped children. This spontaneous integration, which is estimated to affect several thousand children in primary school with handicaps or learning difficulties, however, does not change the present state which could be described as segregated.

9.2 The Education of Children
Belonging to Ethnic Minorities

Since the change of regime the efforts of the educational policy have been focused on changing the system of public education. Little attention was paid, and no sufficient financial resources rendered, to elaborate and implement ’system-compatible’ educational policies serving to handle the educational problems of groups in special situations. Nevertheless, the new educational system built on the principles of decentralisation, liberalisation and shared responsibilities has created beneficial conditions for the education of minorities as well, since it allows individual schools to meet the peculiar linguistic and cultural needs of different local minorities. Decentralisation, however, might include hidden threats as well - regarding the education of Gypsy minorities, in particular.

Nowadays the Croatian, German, Romanian, Serb, Slovak and Slovenian minorities have a stable network of schools. Ethnic Bulgarians, Greeks, Russians and Poles have one primary school each. The education of pupils belonging to other ethnic minorities are organised in ’Sunday Schools’. The number of their institutions and students have continuously increased in the past years as well as their proportion within the educational system: in the scholastic year of 1990/91 44 545 students studied in their mother tongues or in two languages in primary schools or learned the minority language as a subject, whereas, by 1999/2000 their number amounted to 55 013 (Table 9.1). The number of institutions with minority education has also been constantly on the rise. In 1990/91 322 such institutions were registered which was 9% of the total number of primary schools, whereas, in 1996/97 the 384 primary schools aggregated 10% of the total. By 1999 the number of primary schools where education took place in minority languages as well amounted to 395, thus, their proportion grew to 11% (Table 9.1). While until 1996 the number of secondary schools teaching an ethnic minority programme had been increasing to 26, this number diminished to 23 in 1999/2000 which may be explained by the disappearance of vocational schools teaching foreign languages in the country. Statistics on institutions and students show that the existing capacities are not utilised. The decrease in the number of those students who, coming from minority primary schools, continue their studies in minority secondary schools is probably due to the unfavourable location of these secondary schools, the narrow range in training profiles and the low social prestige of minority education. Most of these schools function in an integrated system, that is, students of ethnic minorities attend only certain classes of the institutions.

Table 9.1    Data on ethnic minority education, 1990/91, 1995/96-1999/2000

In the past ten years the differentiation in the regional distribution of schools and school types has been improving. The network of schools is generally adjusted to the geographical locations of the ethnic minorities. The region of the River Mura is the centre of Slovenian education with a general secondary school in Szentgotthárd. Romanian language is taught along the southern frontiers of the country, with a general secondary school operating in Gyula. Schools for ethnic Croatians are typically found in western parts of Hungary while schools of the Slovak minority are characteristic of the North and the Southeast. The schools of other minorities are located sporadically around the country. Larger units are only formed by minorities significant in numbers and secondary schools only partially follow the regional patterns of primary schools. In most cases the secondary school is not located within a realistically achievable commuting range, hence, the only alternative to leaving the network of minority education for a child is finding accommodation in a student dormitory.

Another peculiar feature of minority education is the fact that children of non-minority family backgrounds also tend to appear in minority education which makes the measurement of the actual demand for minority education nearly impossible. One such example with effects of this kind is the increasing interest in German language. In 1999 out of the total number of students receiving an education including minority languages, 84% continue their studies in German minority programmes as opposed to the 75% rate of the similar statistics 10 years ago. Even within the expanding secondary school education the increase in German language proves prominent (82.3%), whereas the number of students engaged in all other secondary school minority programmes shows a declining trend (Table 9.1).

Parallel with the increase in the number of students and new schools entering the minority network a similar increase may be detected in the number of minority teachers, hence, the number of students per school and per teacher have been declining. While in 1987 the number of students per one minority language teacher totalled 52, the same was only 37 in 1998 and the average number of students for one language teacher is 49 in secondary schools. This minority data, which is more favourable than their national equivalents, however, shows significant variation in reference to different languages. Hungarian higher education offers no training programme qualifying teachers to teach subjects in a foreign language at all, neither does it provide for relevant postgraduate courses. The problems of teacher training are partially rooted in the decade-long underdeveloped state of the secondary school network which should be regarded as a basis for training intellectuals.

The working conditions of minority education are excepted to be improved by the additional subsidies guaranteed in the Public Education Act and calculated beyond normative support by the state. In the past ten years these subsidies - of varying amounts - were transferred to schools via local governments. Due to the separate definitions of normative support and additional subsidies, and to the reliance on the support by local governments, these sums often failed to achieve the objective of improving conditions in minority education. The national system of pedagogic service providers in minority education has been repeatedly changed in the 1990s. Currently, aside from minority service centres established within the National Institute of Public Education, the Kiss Árpád National Service Office of Public Education and a network of county level pedagogic institutions are also engaged in pedagogic improvements and offer services. In the lack of financial resources for development, however, this system has only had limited possibilities in influencing the standards and content of minority education.

The Education of Gypsy Students

There is no separate primary institutional system provided for the education of Gypsy students. Although they generally attend schools maintained by local governments on the secondary level of education as well, there are only a few secondary schools with specific Romany pedagogic programmes, including for instance the 6-year Ghandi General Secondary School and College in Pécs, the Kalyi Jag Roma Minority Technical School in Budapest or the Romany Chance Alternative Foundational Technical School.

It is quite difficult to paint a precise picture of the success of the education of Gypsy children, in lack of sufficient information, as since the Act on the Protection of Personal Data was passed in 1993 there has been no information available on their progress in the system, neither can data on their school achievement be presented due to a lack of sufficiently representative surveys. Having examined data from the early 1990s, nevertheless, the gap in schooling seems to have further expanded in the 1980s between the Gypsy minority and the majority by the early 1990s. No improvement seems to be apparent concerning the opportunities of Gypsy students for advancement to secondary level and, though the proportion of their drop-outs has decreased in primary schools, this rate has increased in the vocational training and in the secondary education offering a secondary school-leaving examination. All levels of Hungarian public education lack established conditions for the insurance of the principle of equal opportunities for Gypsy students. Due to lack of relevant data, the effects of the changes in Hungarian public education in the 1990s (such as the expansion of the education aiming at a secondary school-leaving examination for example) cannot be calculated on the achievements of Gypsy students.

The most problematic question in public education related to the education of Gypsy students is the apparent negative discrimination against them. One way of segregation of the Gypsy within the educational system - which is not uncommon in other Central-European countries either - appears to be directing them into so-called special schools and classes organised for children with a slight mental handicap. Nearly half of the children attending such institutions are of a Gypsy origin, which is an approximately tenfold rate compared to their participation in the whole of public education. Even the repeated aggravation in the regulations of directing children into special institutions has failed to prevent these schools from functioning as ’mass storage sites’ for Gypsy students. The vast number of Gypsy students in these institutions, which offer no opportunity for further study or employment, denotes their discrimination and the pedagogic failure of normal public education institutions rather than their mental unfitness.

Several schools apply a more concealed, though pedagogically not less harmful, method of segregation. Lower quality education may be the result of other factors than a separate school. In milder cases segregation might take the form of in-class separation, in more extreme cases, however, it might result in the establishment of segregated classes. In 1995, out of the 840 primary schools providing data Gypsy classes were maintained in 132 schools. The exact number of Gypsy classes is unknown yet it is estimated to amount over 150. Segregated classes are typical of the main towns of the counties. Students attending Gypsy classes do not receive a higher standard of education than those in integrated education. Children taught in such classes tend to show little or no progress and their reintegration usually becomes impossible after a couple of years. Segregation maintains and increases the distance between minority children and their peers, thus, it has an immeasurably damaging effect on children of majority background as well. Sociological studies clearly indicate a strong pressure of segregation in Hungarian public education.

Teaching Romany languages is not compulsory in compensation classes for Gypsies. If, however, the school is willing to assume this task, it will take place according to the provisions on language programmes. The four classes, usually operating in a weekly service in the language teaching of ethnic minorities - in lack of teaching of Romany languages - might be devoted to the development of subjects, the revival of ethnic traditions, socialisation and communication, to cultural activities and/or individual activities for the talented.