Management, the decision-making process and intra-institutional division of tasks have a fundamental influence on the operation of educational institutions. Recently, frequently changing regulations, uncertain funding, the pressure of having to create the necessary financial conditions and new challenges from society have underscored the importance of flexibility, proactiveness and ability to quickly respond to changes. A survey conducted among school heads highlighted excessive bureaucracy (“paper work”), frequent changes in content regulation and scarcity of funds for the operation of schools as the main problems for school management. At the same time, similarly to earlier surveys, school heads consider no serious quality problems related to teachers. Interestingly enough, student behaviour was not ranked among the biggest problems; school heads feel but students' achievement is to be a more serious issue. Hungarian school heads consider cooperativeness as the most important leadership quality. This indicates schools tend to reappraise cooperation as an indispensable means for building a working relationship with their local environment. There are differences between the opinions of general and secondary school heads. General school management tends to consider managerial knowledge more important; secondary school principals rate special leadership skills higher. Caring for children is more important for general school heads, while for secondary school heads this criterion is preceded by solid values. General school heads considered the survival of their school as the most important goal followed by propagation of culture and values, then adaptation to the local environment, connections with partners, and integration of the underprivileged. Official education policy goals such as competence development and integration exist only on the surface, in school heads opinion, what really matters to them is the management and survival of the school.

Several studies have drawn attention to the collapse of medium-level management in schools. This process is closely linked to the withering system of supplements paid to teachers. Dwindling supplements mean it is increasingly difficult to persuade highly qualified teachers to undertake extra duties. It transpires from the findings that the position of head of subject groups (i.e. the working group of teachers teaching the same subject), virtually the only “medium-level management” post at schools, is among the least favoured positions. The same applies to the position of class head, which is an underpaid extra task of dwindling prestige in the majority of schools, and does not have a specific place in the school hierarchy. The natural duties of team management based to the coordination and orientation of teachers working with the same group of students is seen in precious few institutions. On the other hand, all data regarding participation in the decision-making process show that both subject group heads and class head teachers have special duties that cannot be undertaken by any other staff in the majority of schools. Appropriate functioning of the system is further hampered by unclear division of labour within the school.

6.2. External and internal evaluation

Hungary is almost unique among the EU member states in that it has no organized regular external inspection and evaluation of the efficiency of school processes. Maintainers try to undertake inspection and evaluation, for better or worse, from central funds usually secured for specific projects. The law provides that any institution that is professionally autonomous is responsible for its internal control and evaluation. However, the criteria and quality of evaluation are largely different in the various institutions and its effect is arbitrary. The haphazard nature of the culture of evaluation is also indicated by the absence of correlation between the effectiveness of the school and the appraisal of teachers by the school head. Teachers' work is evaluated along clearly conceived, transparent and foreseeable criteria in only a small number of schools. Principals tend to include numerous subjective and arbitrary elements in their rating. There are no incentives nor sanctions rewarding or penalizing the quality of teacher's work or lack thereof; teachers overall have no vested interest in quality.

6.3. Teachers

In recent years several Hungarian and international studies have addressed the conditions and characteristics of the teaching professions. A Hungarian survey conducted in the spring of 2004 was aimed at exploring the mental hygiene of secondary school teachers. Compared to the general population, teachers scored higher in all the areas investigated (self-knowledge, self-efficiency, symptoms of depression, health control, burnout). This is true even when data are compared to other occupational groups whose social status is equal to that of teachers. In the areas investigated the differences in the sample generally cannot be explained by differences in personal particulars (sex, age). Age tends to have an influence in two areas: self-efficiency is greater at the beginning of the career and burnout increases with time. For most of the factors examined, the features of the school overshadow personal characteristics. For example teachers in rural secondary schools with smaller staff tend to have higher self-assessment indicators. Similarly, self-assessment is stronger where the staff is a source of incentive rather than a restrictive force, or where teachers feel their principal involves them in the decision-making process and respects their personal aspirations, or the school's operation is more foreseeable, staff members pay attention to each other, and personal ambitions can be fulfilled.

In another survey, secondary school teachers consider direct transfer of knowledge as their prime task; beyond that, more global educational tasks are of lesser importance. This is probably because in most schools any role assumed over and above the narrower duties related to teaching and teaching plans do not have a clearly defined place in the organizational structure.

Table 6.1. Teachers' opinion about the extent to which various activities are the duties of teachers (%)

Source: Paksi – Schmidt, 2005
The question was: To what extent does your activity as a teacher incorporate these things? The answers moved on a five-grade scale with 1 meaning ‘not at all' and 5 meaning ‘entirely'.

6.3.1. The methodological culture of teachers

Classroom work is still dominated by frontal teaching, although recently increasing efforts have been made to involve more differentiated methods, for example cooperative teaching, less rigid class structures, and use of ITC. The most frequently used method of organization of the teaching-learning process is differentiation within a heterogeneous class. The picture is highly diverse by educational programmes: differentiated class work is a lot more prevalent in general schools, and ICT is more frequently used in secondary institutions.

Chart 6.1. Organization of teaching-learning in school practice based on the answers of school heads, 2005 (%)

Source: School effectiveness analysis, 2005
Question: What methods of learning organization do you use in your school?

6.3.2. Teacher-student relationship

There is a contradiction between students' expectations from the school and the school's values as perceived by students. While students expect the school to help them develop their personality and increase their self-reliance, in their opinion the school considers strengthening discipline and community-minded attitude to be its most important job. Students enjoy school tasks less and less, fewer of them think they have a say in shaping school rules, and they increasingly feel oppressed by school assignments and their image of teachers has been deteriorating.

Aggression is more and more conspicuous within the school walls. Surveys conducted among school children reveal the grievances (mostly originating from teachers) students of different ages foster. The most frequent occurrences are related to evaluation in a broad sense. In a lot of schools the judgmental and disciplinary function of evaluation seems to be more prevalent than necessary. In many cases the educational potential of formative evaluation is unexploited. Student behaviour that is a problem for teachers often includes verbal abuse, but student aggression manifesting in vandalism is also a major concern.

6.4. Schools and their social environment

For years the number one expectation from schools has been the teaching of the mother tongue. Foreign language teaching has moved up on the scale of expectations, and development of communication and cooperation skills have also become increasingly important for public opinion. Similarly, providing young people with a trade has become a much more important expectation than before, and traditional values such as education in morality, instilling love of the homeland, familiarization with national traditions and transfer of scientific knowledge have become less important.

A general experience is that relations between the family and the school are burdened by tensions and conflicts. In a questionnaire-based survey 17.9% of parents formulated some kind of criticism vis-

Since the beginning of the new millennium the overall number of civil organizations has been decreasing; at the same time, the number of grassroots organizations relating to education has been on the ascent. It is probably an indicator of schools' operating and financial problems that more and more parents of children learning at state-run or municipal schools establish foundations in support of their school in an effort to make up for the scarcity of funds. Added to this are the growing numbers of foundations involved in teaching. At the same time, a lot of these organizations have financial problems and find it difficult to provide the human resources necessary for their operation.