2. Shared Responsibilities in Hungarian Public Education: a Description

2.1 The Basic Characteristics of the System

The basic characteristics of the administration of the Hungarian system of public education can be summarised in the following way:

(1) Public educational administration is highly decentralised and the responsibilities are shared between several actors;

(2) Horizontally, the responsibility at the national level is shared between the ministry directly responsible for education and certain other ministries;

(3) Vertically, the responsibility is shared between the central (national), the regional, the local¹ and the institutional levels, that is, there are four administrative levels;

(4) At the local and institutional levels the administration of education is integrated into the general system of public administration, that is, there is no organisationally separate educational administration;

(5) At the local and the regional levels public administration (and educational administration within this) is based on the system of self-governments, that is, it is under the control of politically autonomous, elected bodies. The central government cannot issue direct orders to the local governments;

(6) The role of the regional level is quite weak, while the scope of responsibilities at the local level is very wide;

(7) The number of the local authorities (local governments) is very high, while their average size is small.

It can help understand the basic characteristics of the Hungarian system if they are placed in a model that depicts the various types of public educational administration systems. In a model that differentiates between these systems in the dimensions of separation from the system of general public administration versus the integration with it on the one hand, and the system of self government versus subordination to the state on the other, the Hungarian system of public educational administration belongs to type (B), the integrated self-government type (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.
Systems of public educational administration

2.2 The Evolution of the System: Main Stages

It is important to emphasise that the decentralised character of public educational administration in Hungary is the result of a longer development. Though the basic features of the present system of shared responsibilities were formed after 1990, they have important predecessors from before. The main stages of this development are outlined below in the framed section.

Similarly to the other countries of the region significant changes took place in Hungary as well after 1990. The most important of these changes are summarised here:

(1) In 1989 the former merger of the local and central budgets was ceased, the state support of the local councils was based on a normative system, and the local governments were made interested in raising their own revenues,

(2) In 1990 the former local councils were replaced by the politically autonomous local governments, which became the owners of the previously state-owned schools,

(3) In 1992 teachers were drawn under the effect of the Act on Public Employees and since then their minimum salaries have been determined by the national salary grades,

(4) In 1993 the Act on Public Education authorised the local governments with wide-ranging powers, and it annulled the tight central curricular regulations.

It is important to remark that due to the changes in the socio-economic setting and to the fast and thorough changes within the education system itself - similarly to other countries of the region - Hungary’s public educational administration can be characterised by a transitory nature. As it will be seen later, the new and the old structures, for example, tend to exist side by side.

In the following sections the major characteristics of the educational administration in Hungary are described level by level.

2.3 The National Level Responsibility

2.3.1 Background

First we have to refer in short to the factors that determine the system of shared responsibilities and the way this system works. Such factors are the following: (a) the historical heritage, (b) the political context, c) the context provided by general public administration, (d) changes within the system of public education.

(a) The historical heritage. Both centralisation and decentralisation can be found among the traditions of the Hungarian education system. In secondary education - similarly to other countries - the Protestant tradition can be characterised by decentralisation, while the Catholic tradition by centralisation. Since Hungary came under the influence of Habsburg Catholicism in the 18th and 19th centuries, the tradition of centralisation became stronger. However, the development of elementary education - in the second half of the 19th century - was influenced by the then decentralised model of municipal control. Later, partly due to conflicts with the national minorities and partly to the demands of modernisation, state control became stronger in this field, too. From the 1930s onward strong state control dominated, which was further strengthened by the Communist rule after World War Two. An integrated system was created in the 1950s with the introduction of a Soviet-type public administration. From the 1960s on one step towards decentralisation followed the other (see the section framed). So the condition of decentralisation of today has been the result of a longer development and cannot only be attributed to the political transformation that started after 1989.

The main stages of integration and decentralisation in the period after World War Two In the 1950s with the introduction of the so-called council system the administration of education - similarly to the other countries of the Soviet bloc - got integrated into the general system of public administration. At the end of the 1960s the so-called double subordination of the local and regional units of educational administration was abolished. From that time on the higher levels could no longer issue directives for the lower levels directly. At the end of the 1960s a unified system of regional infrastructural planning was introduced, which incorporated educational planning as well. The so-called Council Act at the beginning of the 1970s empowered the councils with bigger general autonomy, and also gave them wider responsibilities in the maintenance of schools. In the mid-70s the administration of the whole of secondary vocational training was decentralised from the national to the regional level, and by the end of the decade the process went further, it reached the municipal councils. At the beginning of the 1980s, the units, within the councils, responsible for educational administration were merged with units responsible for other (health care, social affairs) fields. In the mid-80s (the 1985 Act on Public Education) educational inspection was separated from public administration and was reorganised as a service; and, at the same time, the autonomy of schools was largely extended.

(b) The political context. Following the first free elections of Hungary, in spring 1990, a national-conservative government majority was formed and it stayed in power until the next elections of 1994. A socialist-liberal coalition formed the government in 1994. The educational portfolio was given to a liberal politician yet the ministry still reflected the coalitional situation (the post of the secretary of state, the deputy minister reporting to the Parliament, was filled by a socialist politician). At the autumn 1990 local elections the opposition parties (the socialists and the liberals) reached a majority in a bigger proportion of the governments while the 1994 local elections resulted in a more balanced share of powers between the coalition and the opposition parties. After the parliamentary elections of 1998 a liberal-conservative coalition was formed. The responsibility for education rests with the dominant liberal party.

c) The context provided by the general system of public administration. We will later return to this issue in detail, here we just highlight a few elements in advance. The system of public administration in Hungary is decisively determined by the 1990 Act on the Local Governments mentioned before. This act entitles the settlements to form their own governments, one of the tasks of which is to provide general public education. The country - including the capital - is divided into 20 bigger regional units, called counties. There are governments operating on the county (and capital) levels as well, which are elected directly by the electorate of the county (the capital). The public administration offices work at the county and capital levels under the direct control of the central government. These offices control the legality of local governmental operations but they hardly have any public administrative tasks.

(d) The changes in the system of public education. As in the other countries of the East-Central European region a significant reform process is taking place in the public education system of Hungary, which also influences the system of shared responsibilities. The National Core Curriculum, adopted in 1995 and coming into effect in 1998, determines the nationally unified curricular requirements for the ten years of compulsory education. This marks the beginning of a significant structural transformation in the education system of Hungary since the length of general basic education is raised from eight to ten years. With the introduction of the National Core Curriculum - and in line with the 1993 Public Education Act - a system of two-level (dual) curricular regulation will come into effect. The essence of this is that within the broad framework of a set of centrally determined requirements so-called pedagogical programmes have to be adopted at the local, institutional level, and, as a part of these pedagogical programmes, and also at the local, institutional level, a local curriculum ² has to be developed, which contains the detailed lesson and subject plans. The actual teaching in the schools is governed by this latter document. In the final stage of public education, in grades 11 and 12, the educational content is determined by the centrally issued Final Examination Requirements, and the content of vocational education is regulated by the National Training Register.³

The implementation of the National Core Curriculum will take a long period of years. In autumn 1998 the new programmes are going to be introduced in grades 1 and 7. Also in effect from 1998 no specialised vocational training can be carried out before grade 10. The first final examinations that reflect the new examination requirements will be organised in 2004.

2.3.2 Responsibility at the National (Central) Level

The governmental responsibility for public education at the national level is shared between several ministries. Moreover, the Education Committee of the Parliament on the one hand, and various consultative bodies on the other (see the section on other actors below) also play a fairly important role.

The system of the general sectoral and governmental responsibilities has gone through a major overhaul after the general elections of 1998. The sectoral responsibility formerly lay with the Ministry of Education and Culture, which used to be responsible for the fields of public and higher education, and for cultural affairs. General responsibility for vocational education - including vocational education within the formal school structure - used to rest with the Ministry of Labour⁴ between 1990 and 1998. In summer 1998 the Ministry of Education was set up. It is responsible for the whole of education, including vocational education, but it does not deal with the field of cultural affairs any more.

The Ministry of the Interior plays a very important role as it has the overall governmental responsibility for the system of local governments, including their local and regional administration of education as well⁵. The general responsibility for financing the public services and within them the financing of education lies with the Ministry of Finance. This ministry submits to the Parliament the proposal for the yearly budgetary acts, which - among others things - regulate the governmental support of education. There are other national authorities worth mentioning: altogether 11 ministries or other national bodies can regulate the requirements of vocational training in their own specific field.

In accordance with the 1993 Act on Public Education (and its 1996 Amendment) the Ministry of Education and Culture - and its legal successor from summer 1998, the Ministry of Education - carries out the sectoral administration of education. This means - in line with the Public Education Act - the following four main groups of tasks:

(1) Sectoral administrative tasks. A great proportion of sectoral administrative tasks are related with curricula and examinations. Since in Hungary - and it has to be emphasised - the regular school and pre-school curricula are not issued by the minister of education but by the central government. The minister is directly responsible for the so-called curricular guidelines of only a few specialised areas (such as the education of minorities and special education). These are the documents that determine the development of curricula at the local (school) level. It has to be emphasised as well that the Act compels the minister to carry out consultations with the representative bodies of the given areas and, in certain cases, to go beyond consultations and obtain their approval.⁶ It is also the task of the minister to issue the details of the examination requirements (the basic requirements of the final examinations are also issued by the government). The minister of education - based on the recommendations of the consultative bodies - also decides which textbooks and teaching aids can be listed in the national textbook register. It is important to repeat here that the central curricular requirements leave a very broad scope for decision-making for the local and institutional levels.

One of the sectoral administrative tasks in institutional provision is to lay down the general requirements concerning school buildings and their equipment. It is worth highlighting that in this field the sectoral administrative competence is weak, there have been hardly any sectoral actions taken. Perhaps the extremely weak sectoral administrative competence concerning public educational statistics can be mentioned in this relation: the minister has only got the right to make recommendations in this field.⁷

A part of the sectoral administrative competence concerning the assurance of quality is the publication of the National Experts’ Register and National Examiners’ Register. These registers play an important role in the assessment system of public education as only those professionals can carry out the tasks of local assessment and examinations who are registered in these documents. It is also the task of the minister to provide for the national-level professional services (and within these the curriculum development and assessment services). The minister is responsible for the regional-level professional control of the pedagogical work carried out in the institutions. It is important to note that - unlike in other countries - the sectoral ministry cannot practise direct control at the local or institutional levels. There are not even organisational conditions created for this.

Concerning the teaching personnel the minister has hardly got any direct administrative tasks.⁸ As it will be discussed later the minister has only got some general regulatory competence concerning the professional promotion and in-service training of teachers. The regulations of the teachers’ salaries and employment conditions fall under the general regulations about public employees. The minister of education cannot directly intervene in matters of initial teacher education as these belong to the competence of the autonomous higher educational institutions. But the general content requirements of teacher education (such as the proportion of teaching practice in initial teacher education) are regulated by a governmental decree.

(2) General regulatory authority. The minister responsible for education enjoys a broad authority to regulate. It is important to emphasise that the Act on Public Education is fairly elaborate in a number of fields, where the minister - entitled by the Act - can use his/her authority to issue provisions of law. It has to be mentioned as well that the minister of education and culture could - until 1998 - practise his authority to regulate in agreement with the ministry of labour in matters related with vocational education. The Act on Public Education lists altogether eleven fields where the minister is entitled, or compelled, to issue legal regulations. Some of these cover the so-called sectoral administrative competencies discussed above, the difference here is that the Act entitles or compels the minister to issue provisions of law.

In the field of curricula we have already mentioned certain areas (the disabled or the minorities) where the minister has to issue the basic curricular principles: these are issued as decrees, or provisions of law. The regulation of the general order of the academic year (the beginning of the academic year, the timing of the examinations, etc.) is also issued in a ministerial decree. Textbook matters are regulated by ministerial decrees as well (for example, the way a manuscript or a book may become a textbook and may get registered in the National Textbook Register). The regulation of the order of the examinations happens in a similar way. The matters of the recognition of foreign degrees can be mentioned among the curricular issues, they also have to be regulated by sectoral decrees.

The minister may issue decrees about two important elements of quality control. One is the measurement and assessment tasks at the national level, the other is the National Experts’ and the National Examiners’ Register. The decree about the latter determines, for example, who and how can get listed in this register.

There is a sectoral decree concerning student flows as well. The regulations of the special education counselling services determine, for example, who may decide and what route has to be followed when a pupil is transferred from a regular school to a special educational institution. Furthermore, there have to be sectoral decrees issued to regulate those questions of the pupils’ legal standing that are not regulated by the Act.

In institutional provision the sectoral minister has got a minimum of regulatory tasks. The minister has to issue a provision of law about the conditions of private education and about the permissions necessary to obtain when offering private educational services.

The regulatory authority of the minister concerning the teaching personnel extends to the forms of training that serve public education. For example, there could be a decree issued about the order of public educational management training. The right to regulate the in-service training and professional promotion of teachers lies with a higher level, with the central government.

(3) Developmental Tasks. One of the most important groups of tasks for the minister responsible for education is connected with the development of public education. The Act on Public Education designates seven areas where the minister of education has to carry out developmental tasks.

It is mainly connected with the field of educational content that the minister has to support developmental projects that serve the solution of pedagogical problems occurring in public education. This task of the sectoral ministry is carried out partly directly (for example by contracting development workshops), partly by way of involving some innovation funds, which pursue their fairly independent policies.

A ministerial task concerning quality assurance is the elaboration, the operation and the development of the system of examinations, and we can connect with this the task of ensuring the conditions of scientific educational research. One of the most resource-demanding activities in this field is the so-called monitor survey, the regular, sample-based measuring of educational achievement.

In providing the institutional conditions the minister has the developmental task to elaborate the long-term and middle-term developmental plan of public education, and to provide professional support for the development of the county development plans. It is worth mentioning that the central grants meant for the development of institutional conditions appear in the budget of the Ministry of the Interior but the Ministry of Education is always involved in making the decisions about the conditions of access to, and the distribution of, these grants.

In relation with the teaching personnel a developmental obligation is to establish the conditions for the training of teachers and institutional heads. This is a field where the ministry is fairly active.

(4) Rights to issue directives. Finally, there are only two special cases when the minister can issue directives obligatory for the actors of public education (maintainers, schools, teachers). One is when the organisation of the examinations is somehow endangered, and the other is when for certain reasons, such as a natural disaster, an extraordinary school holiday has to be ordered.⁹

It is important to emphasise that due to sharing the responsibilities for education in a horizontal way at the national level the regulatory role of the central government is strengthening vis-á-vis the sectoral ministries. As it has, for example, been mentioned before it is not the ministry of education but the central government that issues the decrees that regulate the National Core Curriculum, the Final Examination Requirements and the in-service training and specialised professional examinations of practising teachers. On the other hand, the vertical sharing of responsibilities and the political autonomy of the local governments imply that the regulatory role of the Parliament is strengthening. For example, the yearly regulation of the distribution of the state grants meant for public education is carried out by the Parliament within the framework of the yearly budgetary act.

As we have seen the central sectoral administration has hardly got any rights to issue direct directives. The sectoral responsibility can almost exclusively be practised via indirect means, of which the most important ones are the determination of the basic curricular and other standards, the elaboration of the financing preferences and the launching of developmental programmes. A major proportion of the central administrative means can be put to use only after consultations are carried out with the social partners. So, for example, the programmes serving the in-service training of teachers are accredited at the central level, yet in the accreditation committees the government and the professional organisations are represented in a balanced way.

We have mentioned that in the public education of Hungary there has been no sectoral inspection system in operation since 1985, unlike in many other European countries. The tasks of control and inspection partly lie with the maintainers of schools, and is partly ensured by the operation of the system of assessment and measurements. An important element of this system - besides the system of examinations and the various assessment surveys (such as the measuring of educational achievement based on regular sampling) - is the so-called system of experts. As it has been mentioned before, according to the Public Education Act, professional control in a school can only be carried out by a person who is listed in the National Experts’ Register. It can generally be stated that the possibilities for the central administration to control whether the centrally established standards are met by the system are quite limited. Finally, it is important to stress the Role of the Constitutional Court in connection with the national level responsibility. Since its establishment in 1990 the Court has dealt with educational issues on 14 occasions, 7 of which had a direct impact on public education, and the remaining 7 also did indirectly.¹⁰

2.3.3 Financing

In the Hungarian system of public education there is a clear distinction in financial relations, on the one hand, between the central budget and the maintainers of schools (mostly local governments) and between the maintainers and the schools on the other. Here we concentrate on the first relation and will return to the latter in the section on local and institutional responsibilities.

It is a very rare occasion that the central budget directly provides schools with centrally allocated grants. The grants are given to the school maintainers. There are two major groups of maintainers: the local governments on the one hand, and the churches and private maintainers on the other.

Concerning the state support of local governments: they are given public moneys by various rights but the most important form is the normative grant. Based on certain statistical indicators the local governments are automatically given the grants. Among these grants we can find the normative grant for education (called the per capita grant), which is regulated year by year, as we have mentioned, by the Budgetary Act. There are a variety of normative educational grants that are always granted for the number of pupils that attend a specific grade, a special educational programme (or a certain school type). In 1997, for example, the local governments were given 64.000 HUF for each six grader in basic education, and an additional 19.500 HUF if the pupil followed a national minority education programme. The number of such normatives is fairly high (there were 57 of them in 1997).

Almost all of the state grants, including the normative grants, can be used by the local governments freely. Though the calculation of the grants is based on the educational tasks to be provided by the local governments, the governments are not compelled to spend these grants on education. The state grants given specifically for educational provision in 1996 covered about half of the total educational expenditure of the local governments (See Table 1). The rest had to be supplemented from other resources: partly from the state grants for other purposes, partly from the local governments’ own income. It is important to note that also the salaries of the teachers have to be covered from the normative grants and from the local governments’ own incomes.

Table 1.
The educational expenditures of the central budget and the local budget, 1991-1996 (in million Forints)

	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996
Total public ed. expenditure	125,436	157,375	185,593	216,514	236,372	263,401
What appears from this at the local governments.	122,308	150,768	176,875	211,351	230,901	256,346
Central normative grants from this	71,490	84,107	94,820	93,294	91,676	131,209
Other central grants form this	8,381	6,721	6,106	15,331	7,512	19,750
Proportion of norm. grants to total local ed. Expenditure (%)	58.5	55.8	53.6	44.1	39.7	51.2

As state grants for education and those for other purposes are not separated on local (municipal) level, and as on the other hand state grants for education cover only part of the educational costs, we cannot discuss the education budget independently of the general economic and financial conditions of local self-governments. The conditions of education can be influenced in only a restricted way exclusively through changes of the state education grants. We should be very cautious not to overestimate the influence of education grants or within this the normative grants (that constitute the majority of state education grants). It is true, however, that most actors do overestimate this influence.

The size of the state grants given to the local governments for educational purposes may show significant fluctuations from one year to the other depending on the financing capacity of the central budget and on the budgetary bargaining processes. In order to ensure that the size of the state grant can be more calculable the 1996 Amendment to the 1993 Public Education Act built a special guarantee element into the system. It is a reservation which states that the amount of the state grant given to the local governments for educational purposes cannot be smaller than the 80% of the actual educational expenditure of the local governments two years before.

The maintainers of the public and private institutions - in case their institutions fulfil their basic legal obligations and, as a consequence of this, the local government keeps them registered - are automatically given the same normative state grants as the local governments. On top of this - in accordance with a ruling of the Constitutional Court and with an agreement between the Holy See and the Hungarian government - the maintainers of church schools are given, from 1998 on, the equivalent of the amount that the local governments spent on their schools above the normative state grant in the previous year.

Besides the normative support central grants earmarked for concrete, specific tasks play an increasingly important role. According to the 1996 Amendment of the Public Education Act a fairly large proportion, seven per cent of all public educational expenditure has to be spent on the concrete developmental tasks laid down in the Act. These tasks are aimed at the development of public educational programmes and means (including the new technological means), the development of the teachers’ in-service training and of the conditions of regional provision. The school maintainers have to file in applications for these earmarked grants but the distribution of the grants among the applicants takes place on a normative basis. These grants can only be used for the centrally determined purposes and they have be accounted for in detail. It is worth adding that the Ministry of Education has to reach an agreement about the usage of these central normative grants of educational purposes with the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance.

In financing vocational education the vocational training contribution paid by the employers - in proportion of their total wage expenditures - plays an important role. This contribution covers some 22-25% of the total expenses of school-based vocational training. One part of this is channelled directly to the training institutions by the employers, the other part is channelled to the national Vocational Training Fund.¹¹

The central government can carry out financial supervision in the field of public education only within the general system of financial control. The determinant actor of this process is the national Audit Office, which reports to the Parliament, and which carries out financial supervision in all fields, including education.

2.4 The Regional Level

2.4.1 Background

The regional level in the Hungarian public administration system is traditionally constituted of the counties. The counties are the middle, or regional, levels of educational administration as well. Together with the capital, which counts as a county, there are 20 such regional units in Hungary. There are three basic characteristics of this level worth emphasising. One is that this level, in comparison with the central and especially with the local level, is extremely weak when we take into account the rights and amount of tasks allocated to it. The authorities of the lower level are by no means subordinated to the county level authorities, the latter cannot issue directives for the former. The second characteristics is that public administration - similarly to many other countries - gets duplicated at this level. The tasks of public services and administration are carried out by the 20 elected county governments. However, the legality of the local governments’ operations are not controlled by the county governments but by the county public administration offices, which represent the central government and report to the Minister of the Interior. Finally, the third important characteristic is that some of the towns in the territories of the counties are towns with county rights. These are separated from the county governments to such an extent that their inhabitants do not even take part in the election of the county representatives. There are some other regional level organisations that are connected with educational administration. For example, the county employment centres, which were directly subordinated to the Minister of Labour prior to 1998.¹² The regional courts, or the courts of the towns with county rights, can also play a role when there is legal debate in an educational matter.

There is no historic tradition in Hungary of the bigger, province-size regions that can be found in several countries. It is worth mentioning that there are regularly recurring proposals in the various reform initiatives to establish regions that extend to several counties, and that in some specific fields of administration (e.g. transport, energy supplies) there are such bigger regions drawn up. Before World War Two the administration of education was also based on bigger units comprising of several counties. After 1990, the state organisations for the legal control of the local governments, called the offices of the deputies of the republic, were also organised on the basis of bigger regional units but in 1994 this function was transferred to the county level (and resulted in the establishment of the county public administration offices). The 1993 Act on Public Education also created bigger, several-county units with regional rights but they were abolished in 1995. The issue of creating bigger regional units props up more and more often within the general question of regional development and in relation with the country’s intention to join the EU and to obtain a share of the EU’s structural funds.¹³ The national conception of regional development and the adjoining statistics calculate with such bigger regions. To co-ordinate the developmental programmes regional development councils have been set up in the past few years. The operations of these councils extend to several counties.

The main scene of regional planning and administration is traditionally the county: this is the oldest, historic unit of middle-level administration in the country. Its characteristic is that this unit - under the same name and territorial frame - has housed a wide range of administrative and political institutions over the centuries.

In the state party system there used to be elected councils at the county level, but in reality they acted as the regional units of the central power. Due to the process of deconcentration in public administration, the role of the counties in settlement development and budgetary management gradually strengthened from the mid-1960s on. In the administration of public education it was perhaps this level of the four administrative levels that had the most powers until 1990, though its power was severely infringed by the 1985 Act on Public Education.¹⁴ The establishment of the system of local governments, which wielded actual political autonomy in 1990, resulted in the dramatic suppression of the counties’ rights. Some of their public administration tasks were transferred to the newly established local governments, and others to the new or older regional offices directly subordinated to the ministries. (The former was the case in education.) The task of exercising the legal control over the lower levels of administration was transferred to the regional administration offices reporting directly to the central government. The county governments were practically given the legal standing equivalent to that of the local governments of the individual settlements.

One important indicator of the weakness of the county level is that the local governments at the lower level have the right - and without having to consult the county - to fulfil functions, and to establish and maintain the institutions relevant to these functions, which otherwise are the compulsory functions of the counties. For example, while it is the task of the county government to provide secondary education, any settlement can decide to open a secondary school, or can decide to transfer its existing secondary school - after a properly timed advance notice - to the county, which has to take it over.¹⁵ This situation has partly been modified after the 1996 introduction of the system of county level planning.

2.4.2 The System of Responsibilities at the Regional Level

2.4.2.1 The County Governments

The representatives of the county governments are directly elected by the population during the local elections. The body of political decision-making, the county general assembly, comprises of the elected representatives. The head of this assembly is not called a mayor, as in the case of the settlement governments, but a president, who is elected by the assembly. The assembly sets up committees to prepare the policy decisions, and operates an office to execute the policies and to manage the administrative matters. The county level administrative responsibilities are attached to the county head notary, who is not an elected but an appointed official, and who also heads the office.

The county governments enjoy, on the one hand, local competencies similar to those of the local governments (these are elaborated below when discussing the local governments) and regional competencies on the other. One of their special regional task in public education is to provide the educational services that go beyond the basic provision (excluding the ones that draw nation-wide enrolment) and to exercise the rights connected with them. According to the Public Education Act the county government has to provide schooling for the pupils whose settlement has no school where the obligation to attend compulsory schooling can be fulfilled. It is also the task of the county to maintain the institutions with regional functions, where the schooling demands of several settlements are met. Such institutions, besides the secondary schools, are the vocational training institutions, the student hostels, the music schools and the institutions of the so-called pedagogical-educational services (e.g. speech-therapy services, educational counselling services). The county also has to provide the so-called pedagogical-professional services (documentation and advisory services, in-service training, institutional evaluation, the evaluation of curricular programmes, etc.). This task is carried out by the so-called county pedagogical institutes, which are maintained by the counties for this purpose.¹⁶ The importance of these pedagogical institutes has grown in the past few years due to the broadening of school autonomy and to the strengthening of the demands for quality assurance. We have to stress it here again that the provision of these services and the maintenance of such institutions can also be carried out by the local governments if they are able to or want to.

Other specific tasks of the county governments are regional co-ordination and planning

This group of tasks already appeared right after 1990, in the inauguration phase of the system of local governments, but the law then did not allocate the proper means to them. The task of regional planning was designated for the county governments by the 1996 Amendment of the Public Education Act. It is the counties that have to prepare to medium-term educational development plans but, as the Act rules, they have to involve in the preparation process the local governments operating in the county and the professional organisations of interest negotiation. This plan has to extend to a minimum of six years, and has contain (a) the measures assuring the fulfilment of compulsory schooling, (b) the regional planning of secondary schooling, and (c) the planning of the necessary institutional network and other conditions of education. The plan also has to lay down the relevant responsibilities of the local governments. In order to raise the efficiency of the district-based services the Act also rules that the county governments have to promote and assist the co-operation between the local governments operating in the county, including the establishment of their associations. The county also has to help fulfil the tasks concerning the education of the national and ethnic minorities.

It is important to mention that the county development plans do not have a direct, compulsory standing. Their realisation is enhanced by a variety of forms of financial support, such as the public foundations. These foundations were created, in line with the 1996 Amendment, at the county level to support the fulfilment of the regional tasks. The public foundations are partly financed by the central budget, partly by their own fund-raising with other sponsors. The funds are distributed by an independent professional board among the applying local governments and institutions. The application conditions usually require that the applicant intend to use the grant for a task that is in accordance with the county development plan. The board distributing the funds comprises of the representatives of the sponsors and of the regional maintainers, and the regional economic chambers also play a role in them.

The responsibilities of the county head notaries concerning the administration of education are similar to those of the local notaries (e.g. the legal control of public educational institutions) but they also have some specifically regional tasks (such as the organisation of the final examinations).

It is important to stress that regional customs and informal means can also play a role, beside the formal entitlements, in regional co-ordination. The powerful offices of the former county councils, though their number has diminished, have preserved a lot of their informal influence and professionalism. By disseminating information and advising on forms of schooling, by brokering connections and by various other means, they can influence the local processes beyond their official entitlement.

2.4.2.2 The Regional Bodies of State Administration

We mentioned it before that besides the county councils there are state offices operating at the regional level which play a smaller or bigger role in the administration of public education. There are three groups of these offices worth mentioning from the aspect of public education: a) the formerly mentioned county public administration offices; b) the regional financial information system; and c) the county labour centres.

2.4.2.2.1 The County Public Administration Offices

The most important task of the county (and Budapest) public administration offices, which report to the Minister of the Interior, is the legal control of the local, settlement governments. This activity covers all local governments on the territory of the county but it does not affect the institutions, such as the schools, directly. The administration office may only establish the fact of law infringement and may call upon the local governments to amend the illegal situation within a given deadline.

This task of the county administration office is carried out by comparing the documents of the activities of the local governments (local governmental propositions, passed decrees, resolutions, the minutes of the meetings of the local representatives) with the national laws and decrees in effect, this is how the case of law infringement can be established.¹⁷ The local governments are compelled to react upon the procedure of the county administration office. In case they do not (for example they do not annul the law-infringing decision, or fail to pass a locally compulsory resolution by a given deadline) the county office may file in proceedings at the legal forum competent in the degree of infringement (for example at the Constitutional Court in case of a decree, or at the Municipal Court of the county seat in case of a resolution). The local governments can be enforced to change their decisions only by a court.

The county administration office also has to guard the legality of local decisions concerning the merger, the abolishment, the foundation, or sale of institutions. The legal control in these cases means checking whether the decision-makers have properly notified, and have asked for the opinion of, all those concerned when deciding about the fate of an institution. In the case of a non-government maintained institution, such as a denominational, foundational or private school, the local notary can be appealed to at the first degree, and the county administration office at the second, if the decision is not accepted.

Two important areas of legal control in public education are: the follow-up, on the one hand, whether the state grants are used for the intended purposes, and the control of the legality of the operations of educational institutions on the other. The control of the usage of state educational grants is not in the hands of the county administration offices but of the regional financial directorates (see below) and of the National Audit Office. But the county administration office may have a role in the control of the legality of the operations of a school since, for example, the foundation deed of a school is approved of, and its head is appointed, by the maintainer. The county administration office has to control the legality of the call for applications for school heads and the compliance with the conditions of proper operation even if there have been no complaints filed in. When there is a complaint the county administration office - besides taking the necessary steps - also fulfils a special service role: it provides some advice or a written opinion (for example in legal debates between a school and a local government, between a school head and a teacher, the school board and the school, a parent and a school, etc.)

2.4.2.2.2 The Regional Financial Information System (TÁKISZ)

With respect to public education it is important to mention the regional financial information system, the TÁKISZ-offices, which work under the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance, and which are also the de-concentrated bodies of the central government. Their task is to collect data on the usage of the state budget at the regional level and to operate the information system on the financial administration of, and task provision by, the local governments. It is from their regularly updated database on the local governments that one can gain correct information about the services a local government maintains, what state grant it is entitled to on this basis, and how much money it actually spends on the individual services. Since these pieces of information vital for public education (such as those data on local financial administration and institution maintenance which do not appear in the educational statistics) can only be accessed from here this database is a very important source of information for educational research as well.

2.4.2.2.3 The County Labour Centres

As mentioned before, the county labour centres were previously under the direct control of the Minister of Labour, and now they work under the Ministry of Social and Family Affairs. Their most important task is to cater for the adult unemployed but they also take part in matters of youth unemployment and provide for some forms of vocational training. It is also these centres that possess the labour market information necessary for the planning of vocational training. They also have some public administrative tasks. Furthermore, they register the unemployed, they operate an information network on job vacancies and on options of re-training. These centres organise re-training and further training programmes, the task of which is realised through contracts with the institutions of public education or with the regional training centres.¹⁸

The county labour centres co-ordinate the processes of regional interest-negotiation in the field of vocational training. The organ of this function is the county vocational training council, where besides the representatives of the employers, the employees and the central government, the representatives of the local governments and of the regional economic chambers also take part. The county centres of labour affairs make decisions on the distribution of the Vocational Training Fund by taking the recommendations of these councils and by calling for applications.

2.4.3 Financing at the Regional Level

The financing of public education at the county level is basically the same as at the local level (see the chapter on the local level below). The financial management of the county governments, however, differs from that of the local governments at two major points. Firstly, a much greater proportion of the income of the county governments comes from state support than from their own income. As opposed to the villages and towns the counties do not have the independent right to levy taxes, and they cannot dispose of any proportion of the income taxes levied in their territory. This is one of the important reasons for the weakening of the position of the counties (mentioned above). Secondly, the expenses of compulsory task provision are more difficult to calculate at the county than at the local level. If, for example, a settlement decides to abolish a service with a regional scope it formerly undertook the county is compelled to take it over, which results in a sudden expense surplus.¹⁹

An increasing role is played in the financing of regional tasks by the formerly mentioned public foundations. The funds of these foundations are provided by the state budget, by the state’s contribution as defined in the yearly budgetary act, by the sponsorship of natural persons and legal entities, other company payments, and some further income sources which are laid down in the foundation deed of the public foundations.

The main financing source of the activities co-ordinated by the county centres of labour affairs is the Labour Market Fund, which is a national fund, but its distribution is basically carried out by the regional levels. Within this Fund the formerly mentioned Vocational Training Fund plays an important role in public education. The biggest proportion of this fund is also distributed at the county level.

2.5 The Local and the Institutional Levels

2.5.1 Background

As it has already been remarked the 1990 Act on the Local Governments replaced the former public administrative units, called councils, with local governments. During the first local elections the political forces opposing the government won the elections at most settlements. This may have played a role in the fact that during the first governmental cycle, between 1990 and 1994, the sectoral laws passed aimed at the strengthening of the central administration. After the 1994 elections the political balance between the central government and the local governments became more even. This again may have influenced the development that the sharing of responsibilities and powers between the central and the local levels got stabilised during the governmental cycle of 1994-1998. This situation was generally reflected in the process of sectoral law-making and in the 1996 Amendment to the Public education Act.

The Hungarian system of local governments is dispersed in character. After re-gaining the national independence and establishing a political democracy in 1990 it was an issue of high political importance that any settlement whose population wanted to could create its own local government. As a result, some 3.200 local governments were established. Since then their number has somewhat diminished but there are still over 3.100 of them. More than 2.400 of these local governments maintain an educational institution, out of which more than 1.800 maintain an eight-grade general school, i.e. they cater for the 10-14 age cohort as well. More than 55% of these schools operate at settlements with fewer than a population 2.000 people. (See Table 2.) More than 200 local governments maintain a secondary school for the education of the 14-18-year-old youth. It is only at the bigger-size towns and the cities that the full institutional network of public education is maintained.

Table 2.
The number of local governments who provide for various educational tasks, according to the size of the settlements, 1996/97

The number of inhabitants 01.01. 1996	The number of local governments	The number of local governments that maintain at least an 8-grade general school
-500	992	31
500-999	697	344
1000-1999	668	629
2000-4999	514	510
5000-9999	135	134
10000-19999	76	76
20000-49999	45	45
50000-99999	28	28
100000-199999	12	12
200000020	1	1
Total	3168	1810

Source: BM data, Public Educational Statistics, academic year 1996/97.

The Hungarian local governments and their institutions enjoy a high degree of autonomy. As it has already been pointed out this wide local- and institutional-level independence is the result of a gradual process of the past decades. The first significant step in the direction of decentralisation occurred in the 1970s, when the institutional heads were made employers of the teachers. The professional autonomy of the institutions and the freedom of choice of school were declared by the 1985 Act on Public Education.²¹ The so-called dual system of curricular regulation came into being with the adoption of the 1993 Act on Public Education and of the 1995 National Core Curriculum.

By the ruling of the Act on the Local Governments the formerly state-owned educational institutions became the properties of the local governments in 1990. It is important to note that this change was carried out within the framework of a comprehensive and radical social and political transformation. It means that it had not been preceded by a thorough analyses of responsibilities and competencies of the local governments. So it could happen that smaller or economically weak settlements became the owners of bigger institutions providing services for a whole district, while better off settlements with a substantial number of pupils did not become owners of bigger institutions. The system thus evolving preserves the characteristics of a previous situation.

It was with the 1993 Public Education Act that the system of public educational regulations was adjusted to the process of decentralisation in public administration, then the 1996 Amendment ruled about the details of sharing the responsibilities between the levels of the central government, the local authorities and the institutions. The current regulations make the school-maintaining local governments re-assess the school structure of their settlement, elaborate some educational policy preferences that are in line with the local economic and social demands, and rationalise task-provision. The preparation of the school-level pedagogical programmes makes it possible to renew professional work and to adjust it to the settlement’s educational policy preferences.

2.5.2 Responsibility at the Local (Municipal) Level

At the local level the majority of decisions concerning public education are made by the representative bodies elected by the inhabitants of the settlement. The president of the representative body, the mayor, is elected directly by the electorate. The notary of the settlement is entitled by the laws to make the majority of the decisions concerning public administration and other fields of authority. It is only at the bigger-size municipalities that there is a separate governmental unit for public education, which, however, also usually deals with other matters (such as health care and social affairs). Where there are at least three educational institutions maintained the local government has to set up an education committee. The majority of the members of this committee have to come form the elected representatives but most of them adopt external experts as well.

It is important to emphasise that the content and extent of local level responsibility in Hungary does not depend on the size of the settlement. It is the same whether we take a small settlement with a few thousand inhabitants and only one school, or towns that have a full institutional structure in public education. The only exceptions to this are the cities, which - as it has been mentioned before - enjoy similar rights and responsibilities as the counties (cities with county rights). At the same time, the character and the quality of local educational administration are greatly determined by the size of the settlement. Carrying out the responsibilities in education means a serious problem for a number of smaller school-maintaining local governments. Professionals with college or university degrees are very scarce in these small villages, so the quality of education and its control can be very uncertain.

As it has been mentioned, the scope of local responsibilities is very wide. Yet - to make public education more unified and to enhance equity nation-wide - there have been a number of legal regulations issued in the past few years to mark out the boundaries within which these responsibilities can be exercised.

The local responsibilities concerning vocational education are worth some extra attention. The whole system of vocational education and training has been refurbished in the past years: with the introduction of the National Core Curriculum the general basic education will last until age sixteen. Any vocational education, approved of by the National Training Register, can only commence after this age. The more and more powerful actors of the economic sphere, the economic chambers, and the labour administration are putting an increasing pressure on the vocational training institutions so that they change their training structures and better respond to the demands of flexibility. These organisations can support this reform both by professional and by financial means, which enhances a speedier change in vocational education.

In the following sections we overview the contents of local responsibilities according to the major administrative functions.

2.5.2.1 The Obligation to Provide Services

Ruled by the Act on the Local Governments the local governments have to provide the inhabitants of the settlements with the services of kindergarten and basic school education. Within this general obligation the local government can decide about the foundation, the maintenance, the re-organisation, the abolishment of an educational institution, and about setting up an association or a co-operation agreement with another local government. Formerly the practice of these rights was solely autonomous within the given legislative framework but since the inception of county level planning the local governments have to take the contents of this plan into consideration.

It is an important characteristic of the Hungarian administrative system that the obligation to provide the services does not mean that the local government actually has to maintain a school. The law allows the local representative bodies to enter into co-operation, or form associations, with other governments, or to contract other maintainers (such as a foundation or a private person), for the provision of educational services. While resorting to such solutions the local governments have to comply, naturally, with the general constitutional rights, for example the rights for the freedom of conscience and for fair treatment.

During the first cycle of local governmental rule there were few examples to associations or co-operations because a number of local governments saw the establishment and maintenance of a school as a proof of their autonomy. Nowadays, however, the number of associations with other local governments and agreements with other maintainers is on the rise. One reason for this is the constant diminution of the local governmental resources, another is the steady decline in the number of school-age children. A further important reason is that with the introduction of the county-level planning of public education the isolation of the local governments operating within a county has eased. With access to each other’s data the local governments are now more able, or willing, to enter into associations, which may be a logical, reasonable and expense-saving decision.

2.5.2.2 General Regulatory Tasks

The local governments regulate - with effect to their own institutions - the period and way of enrolment in the kindergartens and schools, and they map out the enrolment districts. The local governments generally do these tasks by issuing local decrees.

2.5.2.3 Tasks Concerning the Personnel

The head of a local government-maintained institution is appointed by the local body of representatives, who act as the head’s employers. This also means that the work of the head has to be assessed and controlled by them, and they can also offer a bonus or a salary-upgrade to the head. So far there have been very few local governments who have laid down and applied objective criteria in the assessment of school heads. They do not often employ external experts to do the assessment either. The institutional heads are also rarely compelled by the local governments to take part in in-service training. This situation will probably change in the near future as the infrastructure of public educational management training has recently been institutionalised and the training possibilities will soon be regularly offered.

Even though the employer of the teachers is the school the number of the teachers employed can be regulated by the local governments by determining - within the general framework of the Public Education Act - the kinds of tasks the school has to fulfil and by determining the number of pupils in the school groups or classes. They can decide to differ from the indicators given by the Act in case they are able to finance the extra costs. The local governments may also determine the number of non-teaching personnel by issuing local regulations in which they connect the number of available posts to certain indicators of the school (such as the square metres that have to be cleaned).

2.5.2.4 Tasks Concerning the Curricula

The most important element of administration concerning educational contents is that the schools’ pedagogical programmes and the local curricula within them are approved of by the local governments. (This responsibility could be exercised for the first time in 1998.) During the adoption of the programmes the local governments can assert the demands of a local educational policy. It is important to emphasise that the preparations for the implementation of the National Core Curriculum have made the bigger school-maintaining local governments elaborate their settlement-level educational conception and build it in the county developmental plan. It has to be stressed as well that during the adoption of the schools’ pedagogical programmes the local governments can only examine the programmes’ legal and financial aspects, they are not allowed to issue an opinion on the professional-pedagogical contents. This can only be carried out by the experts who are listed in the National Experts’ Register, and whose opinion the local governments have to ask for.

2.5.2.5 Tasks Concerning Administration and Legal Control

It is the task of the local government to pass the decisions in issues of educational administration (such as the ones about compulsory schooling) and to legally control the operation schools. The most important form of fulfilling these tasks is the adoption of the documents that are drawn up by the school staffs and that regulate the internal operation of the kindergartens and schools. Beyond these there are some other means for the maintainers to control the schools’ legality of operations. The local governments may pass decrees in which they determine what information and data the schools have to provide for them. It is the notary of the local government who may control whether the laws and regulations are abided by the educational institutions (at all institutions at the settlement, not just at the institutions maintained by the local government).

2.5.2.6 Tasks Concerning Quality Control

It is the task of the local governments to assess the quality of the professional work of their schools. The form of this assessment is regulated by the Public Education Act: the assessment can be based on an expert opinion, on the report handed in by the school, or on the opinion of the school board. As a result of this evaluation process the maintaining local government may commission the institution or its head with further tasks. Research has, however, shown that a majority of local governments neglect the task of institutional assessment.

2.5.3 Responsibility at the Institutional Level

As it has already been mentioned there are traditions of institutional autonomy in our country. The current regulations set a scope of responsibilities and decision-making competencies for the institutional heads and the teaching staff, who, in a lot of cases, have to consult, or reach agreements with, other actors.

2.5.3.1 Responsibility Concerning the Personnel

The employer of the teaching and non-teaching personnel of an educational institution is the head. The head decides about the issues of teachers’ promotion and changes in salary with the obligation to consult the opinion of the bodies of interest negotiation. The head assigns the tasks of the teachers after consulting the opinion of the school departments. The participation in in-service training is decided about by the school staff. The evaluation of the work of individual teachers is carried out by the head, who involves external experts and the departments in this task. Under certain conditions the head may reduce the number of compulsory hours taught by a teacher. It is also the head who evaluates the work of the non-teaching personnel and decides about their salary upgrading but in both matters their bodies of interest negotiation have to be consulted.

2.5.3.2 Responsibility Concerning Educational Content

As a major rule we can say that in educational-pedagogical issues it is the teaching staff that can make the decisions. The pedagogical programme, the local curricula, the applied programmes and methods, the selection of textbooks and teaching aids, all belong to the decision-making competencies of the teaching staff. The strong position of the teaching staffs can be highlighted by the fact that they can file in an appeal at a court if their maintainer does not approve of their pedagogical programme.

2.5.3.3 Responsibility Concerning the Operation of the Institution

The organisational and operational regulations of the school, and the rules of the house, are drawn up by the head and adopted by the teaching staff. During the adoption or the modification of both these documents the agreement of the school board and of the pupils’ self-governing body has to be asked for. If the organisational and operational regulations of the school are not approved of by the maintaining local government the school may appeal to a court.

The head in his/her person is the responsible leader of the institution in every aspect. He/she is, however, obliged to carry out consultations in every issue concerning the operation of the institution with the school staff, the school board, the pupils’ self-governing body, and with the council of public employees (these bodies will be described in detail below, when discussing the role of other actors). In a situation of crisis the head may announce - with the approval of the maintaining government - an extraordinary school holiday.

The yearly plan of the school’s operation is prepared by the school staff. In recent years the decisions of the school staffs have seen a boost in appreciation since, as we have seen, almost all important issues concerning educational contents and school operation require the decision of the school staff. It is not only an internal consultation that has to be carried out before the decisions are made by the staff, they have to consider the demands of the parents and of the local governments. These processes require school staffs that are ready to be constructive, ready to make agreements and compromises, and require school managers who can carefully prepare such processes.

2.5.4 Financing and Financial Management at the Local and Institutional Levels

Previously we analysed in detail the financial relations between the central budget and the local governments. Here we are going to describe the financial connections between the school maintainers (local governments) and the educational institutions, and we will describe how financial administration works at the institutional level.

2.5.4.1 Financing at the Local Level

The local governments finance their educational institutions from their own incomes, so in Hungary the sizes of the amounts devoted to public education basically depends on the budgetary decisions of the local governments. The incomes of the local governments have several sources: grants from the state budget for various purposes (most of these are so-called normative grants, which depend on the number of people using the services), the local taxes levied by the local governments, the proportion of the general income taxes transferred from the central incomes to the local governments, incomes from accumulation, and other incomes (such as the support for the health service). According to the law the local governments are not compelled to spend the normative state grant on public education. Practice, however, has shown that the educational expenditure of the local governments is not less but usually much more than the state grant. Some 30% of the governments’ yearly budget is devoted to education.

The local governments enjoy a high degree of freedom in shaping the local structure of financial administration. They can decide autonomously what proportion of the available resources they want to spend on investments or on operational expenses, and what proportion of the operational expenses can be spent on salaries. This autonomy is limited in the main by the scarcity of resources and by the inherited structure of expenditure. The local governments that maintain several institutions can also decide autonomously how they distribute the resources among their various institutions.

The structure of financing public educational institutions has not shown much change in the past few years but other changes have occurred. On the one hand, the local governments are compelled to spend a bigger share of their own incomes on education because the real value of the state grants diminishes. On the other hand, there has been a tendency, especially since 1995, to cut back educational expenses and to manage the resources in a more efficient way. This process has been enhanced by the decline in pupil numbers and by the restrictive measures of the central government.

There is a variety of practices applied in the local distribution of resources.²² A number of local governments are trying to base the financing of their educational institutions on the type and number of tasks carried out by them. This is called task-financing. The occasion to adopt this method is highly appropriate now as the adoption of the pedagogical programmes and the adjustment to the county developmental plans call for the revision of the foundation deeds of the educational institutions and for the exact re-definition of their compulsory tasks. However, task-financing has no traditions in Hungarian public administration. Both the financial officials of the local governments and the institutions show a great resistance to it because it requires an unusual attitude and the yearly re-calculation of the whole budget of the institutions. The currently applied basis-financing is much simpler. It means that the budget of the former year is raised by an amount that equals the rate of inflation of the same year, and this results in the new yearly budget. This system allows a great deal of personal bargaining as well. It looks fairly certain that basis-financing will prevail in the financing of educational institutions for some more time.

Beside the regular ways of financing many of the well-off municipalities have put aside certain amounts in the past few years to offer application possibilities for the educational institutions during the fiscal year. The themes in which applications are called for are usually determined by the education committee or by the body of representatives, and they decide about the distribution of the resources. There is usually some political significance attached to this process but local governments have already supported major professional initiatives this way as well.

It is important to mention in relation with the financial administration of the local governments that any major investment can only be carried out in accordance with the law on public procurement. This means that the major developments can take place under the scrutiny of the general public, which strongly diminishes the danger of corruption.

2.5.4.2 Financial Management at the Institutional Level

Most schools are financially autonomous institutions. The institutions’ income is basically determined by the institutional budget, which is provided by the maintainer, and which is the outcome of a budgetary bargaining process with the maintainer. The structure of the expenditures is determined by the tasks laid down in the foundation deed of the institution, and also by certain circumstances, such as the qualifications of the teachers required to fulfil the tasks and the concrete forms of task provision. The minimum budgetary demand of an educational institution is easily calculable with the guidelines of the central legal regulations (first of all the Act on Public Employees and the Public Education Act). Depending on the local possibilities and on the results of the local bargaining process, however, the institutional budget may provide for more than just the provision of the minimal compulsory tasks.

For the past few years there is an increasing number of possibilities for the institutions to gain some extra income from other sources. The ministries and various national and international foundations regularly call for grant applications for concrete or more general purposes. On top of this most schools have formed their own foundations, which parents or economic organisations are welcome to support financially. For two years now taxpayers may donate one per cent of their income tax to any foundation that qualifies to the conditions laid down in the legal regulations (this, however, brings a very modest extra income to the foundations).

The vocational training institutions can moreover apply for grants at the central or decentralised funds, such as the Vocational Training Fund, where the applications are called for the purpose of purchasing machinery and equipment to be used in vocational education. They can also apply for funds directed at them by the economic chambers and they can be directly supported by economic organisations.²³ Vocational schools are often directly sponsored by the ministry responsible for their vocational field (e.g. a vocational school for the food processing industry from the Ministry of Agriculture).

Most schools carry out certain economic or other activities to gain extra income: they rent their classrooms for language classes or even held the courses themselves. Vocational schools may earn serious extra income by taking part in the in-service or retraining programmes of the adult labour force. The financial management of the institutions is controlled by the local governments.

As we have pointed it out the maintainers of the private (denominational or foundational) institutions receive the same normative state grant as the local governments. They may receive some auxiliary state support on top of this if they take part in the general task provision of public education. In the latter case they do not have the right to levy school fees.

2.6 Other Actors

Beside the central, regional, local and institutional levels of responsibility it is important to emphasise the roles and responsibilities of other actors (social partners, professional and civic organisations, etc.) The responsibility of the other actors stems partly from the fact that the Act on Public Education declares the rights of founding and maintaining an educational institution for a broad circle of actors. The churches operating in Hungary, economic organisations, foundations, associations, and private individuals may found and maintain a school beside the state and the local governments. In this case they bear exactly the same responsibilities as the school maintaining local governments.²⁴ Furthermore, certain other actors (see their introduction below) have a legally guaranteed right to take part in the decision-making processes, or to express their opinion in the educational issues relevant to them, of the consultative bodies operating at the various levels of public education

2.6.1 Consultative Bodies at the Various Levels

2.6.1.1 The National Level

The issues of labour relations and the relevant financial regulations concerning the employees of budgetary institutions (and among them the teachers working in state and local government-maintained public schools) are dealt with, at the macro level, by the KIÉT, the Interest Co-ordinating Council of Budgetary Institutions. The members of this council comprise of the representatives of the central government, the national trade unions of the employees of budgetary institutions, and the national federations of the local governments. The sphere of authority of this council: the general and overall issues of the budgetary institutions and of those employed by them, and the yearly negotiation of the minimal salaries of public employees. The KÖÉT, the Interest Co-ordinating Council of Public Education, deals with the same issues at the sectoral level (public education). This council also discusses the drafts of laws that concern the employees in public education and discusses the general educational proposals and conceptions in the form of three-party interest-negotiation.

The OKNT, the National Public Education Council, takes part in the preparations of the decisions concerning public education, within it mainly the curricula, the textbooks and the examinations. The OKNT is a national professional body for decision-preparation, for phrasing opinions and proposals,²⁵ and its members are commissioned by the minister of education. Within the OKNT several standing and provisional committees may operate. The standing committees of the OKNT are: Textbook and Teaching Aids Committee, the National Accreditation Committee for Teachers’ In-Service Training, and The National Final Examinations Committee. The members of the OKNT are delegated by four “sides": the professional organisations of the teachers, the teacher education institutions, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the minister responsible for education.

The body to assist the minister of education with preparing the decisions, phrasing opinions and proposals is called the KPT, the Public Education Policy Council. Except for salaries and other labour issues this council discusses all issues of public education. Eight “sides", the eight most important actors of public education, take part in the work of this council with four representatives each: the central government, the local governments, other school maintainers, the minority governments, the professional organisations of teachers, the teachers’ trade unions, the organisations of the parents and of the students.

Interest negotiation with the social partners is extremely important in the field of vocational education. The body to provide a forum for this is called the OSZT, the National Vocational Training Council, where the representation - beside the employees, the employers and the central government - of the interest co-ordination bodies of the economic organisations (the economic chambers) and of the school-maintaining local governments is also ensured. The task of the OSZT is to discuss the policy issues of vocational training, and within this, to make proposals for the distribution of the Vocational Training Fund.

2.6.1.2 The Regional Level

The Public Education Act rules that the county governments have to involve the social partners into the preparations of the county developmental plans. How this is done, however, may vary from county to county. The Act rules in detail about the way the conciliation between the county government and the local government of a town with county rights has to be carried out. Vocational Training Councils similar to the OSZT mentioned above operate at the county levels as well, where they play an important role in distributing the decentralised vocational training funds.

2.6.1.3 The Local Level

Besides the central regulations the maintainers of the institutions (usually the local governments) play a determinant role in the appointments and payments of teachers working in Hungarian public education. This is why the Act on the Legal Status of Public Employees rules that the local forums of interest negotiation have to be formed but the actual way of doing this depends on the local actors. According to a 1995 survey of the local governments 28% of those surveyed said they formally operated such a local body of interest negotiation. (The proportion of towns and cities within this is 71%). Since 1995 the number has become most probably much higher.

2.6.1.4 The Institutional Level

The schools can set up a school board to assist the educational work carried out and to enhance the co-operation among the school staff , the parents, the students, the maintainer, and any other organisation concerned with the operation of the institution. The school board may formulate an opinion about all the questions and issues of the school but in certain instances, such as the adoption of the school’s pedagogical programme, it is compulsory to consult it. It is also the school board that can decide about the usage of the school’s own incomes that are generated through some economic enterprise. The Act on the Legal Status of Public Employees (Kjt.) rules that at the institutional level the representative trade union has the right to set up a collective contract with the employer. A Council of Public Employees (KT) has to be formed at every institution, which has consultative rights in issues of teachers’ employment and salaries.

2.6.2 The Various Actors

Besides the formal and institutionalised forms of participation some other forms of consultation and influencing have got a long tradition in Hungarian public education, which can be connected with various other actors. Here we are going to introduce the major groups of these other actors focusing on their participation in the various bodies listed above and on the way they exercise their informal influence.

2.6.2.1 The Professional Organisations of Teachers

Professional organisation of teachers has got long traditions in Hungary. Before 1945 there used to be some 150 teacher organisations or associations, which were abolished by the communist rule by 1948. Even though the organisation of the profession in one form or in another recommenced in the 1960s the general and legal reorganisation of the professional organisations of teachers could unfold after 1989, when the law on the right to associate was passed. The number of these organisations changes constantly. The professional organisations give one “side" to the KPT, the Public Education Policy Council, and they nominate 48% of the participants of the OKNT, the National Public Education Council (10 of the 21 standing members). During the re-election of the KTP there were 128 national professional organisations registered.²⁶

The participation of the professional organisations in the work of the national consultative bodies can be considered - due to their large numbers and variety - rather formal and symbolic. The government’s ideas concerning the national professional policies (draft legislation, conceptions) are usually sent to most national organisations for commentary so they have the opportunity to get acquainted with the government’s conception of curricula, textbooks, examinations, teacher education and in-service training, etc., in advance, and they can formulate their opinion. In cases, however, which are found extremely deleterious by the profession (for example the resistance to the planned abolition of the final examination in history) the most common means of putting pressure on the government is resorting to the media. Yet the most important activities of these organisations centre around their own members: they organise the public life of the profession on the national, regional and local levels, they publish and disseminate their own professional materials.

The professional organisations organise partly around certain subjects (such as the Association of Teachers of History) , partly around certain types or stages of schools. Several of the latter have a strong influence on public education policy decisions (Hungarian Society of Vocational Education, The Association of Hungarian Kindergarten Teachers, The Federation of Student Hostels, etc.).

2.6.2.2 Teachers’ Trade Unions

According to their legal acceptability there are two major types of teachers’ unions worth differentiating in Hungary: the nationally representative and the non-representative trade unions. According to the Act on the Status of Public Employees trade unions are representative if their nominees obtain at least 10% of the votes during the school-level elections of the Council of Public Employees. In the sector of public education such a union is the Teachers’ Trade Union (PSZ), which organises teachers across all school types, and the Union of Hungarian Musicians and Dance Artists, which represents a narrow circle of teachers. These unions represent teachers in the national-level consultative bodies (KIÉT, KÖÉT). These bodies, however, usually invite some other trade unions as well (such as the PDSZ, the Democratic Trade Union of Teachers, which was formed during the change of the regime). Teachers’ trade unions give one “side" of the KPT (Public Education Policy Council) as well.²⁷

The participation of the trade unions in the formation of teachers’ working conditions is ensured at the national, regional, local and institutional levels, and, through their representation in the KPT , they enjoy consultative rights in issues of public educational policy-making. Besides their participation in these bodies the teacher trade unions rarely resort to other means of pressure. (Teacher demonstrations, protest actions, threats of strike are quite rare, there has only been one nation-wide strike of teachers organised but there have been several strikes on the institutional level.) Political lobbying is a more wide-spread means used (the general secretary of the PSZ for example, is a member of Parliament). Both the PSZ and the PDSZ publish their own paper, where, beside labour issues, they formulate their opinion on policy issues and provide a forum for others to express their views.

2.6.2.3 The Federations of the Local Governments

The federations of the local governments deserve some special attention because the local governments play a determinant role in Hungarian public education. There are seven larger federations of local governments known at the national level. The TÖOSZ, the National Federation of Settlement Governments, is the biggest of them and comprises of local governments of different sizes and types. The Hungarian Federation of Local Governments aspires for a similar integrative role but its membership is much smaller. The towns with county rights (the cities), the small towns, and the county governments all have their own independent federations. The villages are represented by two different federations, The Federation of Bigger Village Governments and the Hungarian Village Federation.

The representatives of the federations of the local governments, as they are the biggest employers in public education, take part in the work of the national interest-negotiation bodies (KIÉT, KÖÉT), and they represent one “side" in the KPT, the consultative council of educational policy. Since public education is the “weightiest" local governmental task (it uses the biggest proportion of resources), it is the most important professional field for the federations as well. “Specialised" educational bodies have only been set up in the cities with county rights (the organisation of the educational committees of the cities with county rights), and the TÖOSZ employs a full-time educational spokesperson. Due to the short time of operations and little experience of the federations (TÖOSZ, the oldest one of the federations, was created in 1989) the major activity of these organisations is to take part in the forums of national-level consultations. The organisational work among their own members and their independent policy formulation are more limited.

Though the federations of the local governments are one of the most important negotiation partners of the central government the interest-co-ordinating negotiations with them are much complicated by their large numbers and by the fact that they represent only certain groups of settlements. The common organisation of the federations of the local governments, the Council of the Federations of the Local Governments, which was created in 1996, may become the proper negotiation partner for the central government.

2.6.2.4 Other Non-governmental Organisations

There have been a number of non-governmental organisations founded in public education to operate in some special field of education or to realise certain educational objectives. Some of them, such as the Association of Foundational and Private Schools, the organisation of the maintainers of foundational schools, are represented in the non-local-governmental “side" of the KPT. TheAssociation for School Equity, for example, strives for a specific educational objective (to spread the 12-grade comprehensive school). The small school of small villages and farming areas, and the schools associated with specific pedagogical philosophies, have their own representations (the Federation of Small Schools, Hungarian Waldorf Forum, Budapest Montessori Society).

2.6.2.5 The Churches

The churches as school maintainers are represented at the national level KPT, they are members of the non-governmental maintainers’ “side", and so they can have an influence on public education as a whole. As maintainers they play an important role for the schools of their own creed in training and in-service training their teachers, in preparing and disseminating their teaching materials and textbooks. They are the employers of the teachers who teach confessional religious studies at local governmental and public schools for opting pupils. The role of the churches in educational policy at the settlement-level varies greatly according to the expectations of the local population, on the local members of the clergy and on the differences of the educational institutions present at the settlement.

2.6.2.6 The Parents

The parents enjoy formal consultative rights at the national and at the institutional levels. The organisations of the parents constitute one “side" of the KPT. Even though there used to be some examples for the self-organisation of parents (parents/teachers) before 1945, the relative weaknesses and occasional character of such organisations are internationally well-known problems. The Hungarian parents’ organisations that have come into being since the chance of the regime also seem to be quite volatile. The best-known national organisations are the National Association of People with Large Families²⁸ and theNational Association of Hungarian Parents. Most of the better-known parents’ organisations are either committed to a special world view (e.g. the National Association of Catholic Parents, Parents for the Piarist Schools), or work for the interests of a special, underprivileged group of children (the Association for Children with Dyslexia, the Federation for the Protection of Interests of Children with Mental Disabilities, the Association of the Partially Sighted, the National Federation of the Hearing Impaired). Their activities affect public education as well. There were examples, especially in the years following the change of the regime, that the parents organised federations along their party sympathies. At the institutional level the parents represent their interests in the school boards.

Among the groups of parents the ways of spontaneous assertion of interests is more typical than the organised forms of interest representation. The increase of their freedom to choose and found schools provides the means for this on the one hand. On the other, the most frequent and effective events of the assertion of parents interests in the past few years have been connected with the closure and merger of schools, their transfer to other maintainers (mostly to a church), and occasionally with the appointments of school heads. These events were well publicised by the (local and national) press so it is fair to say that the parents have become important shapers of local educational policies. Such events have also shown that the relationship between the schools (the teachers) and the parents (the common feeling for “our school") has strengthened a lot lately. Involving parents into decision-making in the professional issues at the institutional level seems much less significant.²⁹

2.6.2.7 The Students

At the institutional level - besides the legal guarantees for the protection of the rights of pupils - the Act on Public Education rules that the representatives of the pupils/students have to be involved in the work of the school board. At the national level the students constitute one “side" of the KPT. With regards to the representation of students the same problems arise as with the parents, the problem of responsibility and representativity. The best-known organisation at the national level is the National Student Union, but it is probably in this sphere that organisations are formed and dissolved most frequently. There is an interest-negotiation organisation at the national level, the Council for the Protection of Interests of Children and Youth, whose scope of action extends beyond public education, and in which the organisations of students have the rights to participate. Besides this council the minister relies on a separate advisory body in the narrower area of students’ rights, on the National Students’ Rights Council.

2.6.2.8 The Actors of the Economic Sphere

The role of the economic actors (economic chambers, employers’ organisations and economic organisations) as founders and maintainers of schools - especially in the field of vocational education - has increased steadily since the change of the regime. They have an ever increasing influence on vocational education policy, including the determination of the training requirements. Their influence is mostly exercised through the National Council of Vocational Education and through the county-level councils of vocational education. The Vocational Training Fund is distributed according to the recommendations of these bodies both at the national and the regional levels. Their influence is also ensured by their participation in the drafting process of the county public educational developmental plans. The economic organisations play an increasing role in the direct organisation of practical vocational education: they have an incentive for this by the possibility of tax deduction.

2.6.2.9 National and Ethnic Minorities

Currently there are 11 minority self-governments in Hungary (Armenian, Bulgarian, Croatian, German, Greek, Polish, Roma, Romanian, Serb, Slovakian and Slovenian). The law guarantees their rights, too, for founding and maintaining schools. At the national level they constitute one “side" of the KPT, the consultative body of educational policy issues. Besides this, the minister of education involves the National Council of Minorities in the preparations of decisions concerning the education of the national and ethnic minorities. This council enjoys the same legal standing as the OKNT, the National Public Education Council, and comprises of representatives delegated by every minority self-government. The minority self-governments enjoy strong rights in every educational issue relevant to them both at the national and the local levels, which in most cases means the right of agreement (or veto).

2.6.2.10 Foreign Organisations

Among the other actors who have an influence on educational policy decisions the foreign organisations deserve some special attention. The influence of various international organisations on public education in Hungary, just like in other countries of the region, increased greatly after the political transition in 1990. Most note-worthy is the World Bank, which has provided credit for several developmental programmes in public education as well, though its funds have mainly been aimed at vocational and higher education. We can also mention the OECD, which took Hungary as a member in 1996, but by a former partnership agreement the OECD had taken part in the programme of “X-raying" Hungarian educational policies before that. The data and the analyses obtained through the surveys of the OECD - within the so-called ‘indicators’ programme (INES) - have exercised a tangible influence on Hungarian public education. The European Union and its Hungarian representation has a growing influence as well. The European grants and Community Action Programmes have mainly aimed at vocational and higher education but public education has recently become a target area as well. Finally we have to mention the Soros Foundation, which - in the form of an independent programme - has spent vast sums on the development of public education in Hungary.

2.6.3 The Role of the Other Actors in Financing

According to an OECD survey of Hungary, from the 4.5% of GDP educational expenditure of 1993 0.4% came from non-budgetary sources. The biggest proportion of this percentage must have come from the contributions of the families. According to a survey, 60% of costs of textbooks, for example, were covered by the parents in 1994. This proportion rose to 80% by 1997. An important form of parental contribution is the support given to the foundations that were created by a lot of schools. As we have mentioned before, from 1997 on taxpayers have the legal entitlement to donate 1% of their income tax to certain listed organisations that work for the common good. According to press reports this option has brought in some significant extra income for some schools.

The reliance on external sources is most wide-spread in vocational education. As we have mentioned it before the system of vocational training contributions makes it worthwhile for economic organisations to support schools directly. It has also been mentioned that the distribution of the vocational training fund happens with the participation of the social partners. Significant international resources have been spent on the development of vocational and higher education, this, however, has not happened in public education.