Study on Innovation in Education

by János Setényi

Expanzio Consulting Ltd.

New Approaches of Educational Management, 2000

Hungarian Background Report

Draft Version
Budapest, March 2000
 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION
 
II. THE EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT-RELATED POLICY ENVIRONMENT
2.1. Governance with shared responsibilities
2.2. Competition as a driving force
2.3. The position of stakeholders
 
III. MANAGEMENT TRADITIONS AND STYLES
3.1. Traditions and changes
3.2. Local communities as the field of policy and management
3.3. The new role of the Ministry
3.4. The scope of school autonomy
3.5. The professional training of school-directors and teachers
3.6. The challenges of institutional management
 
IV. ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE AND OPERATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
4.1. Finances
4.2. Management of human resources
4.3. Development policies
 
V. CASE ONE: THE CREATION OF SCHOOL BASED PEDAGOGIC PROGRAMMES AND CURRICULA
 
VI. CASE TWO: THE QUALITY ASSURANCE OF THE NEW IN-SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING SYSTEM
 
VII. CASE THREE: THE CREATION OF THE COMENIUS 2000 QUALITY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
 
VIII. CONCLUSIONS: PATTERNS OF INNOVATION

 

I. INTRODUCTION

This report aims to present innovations concerning quality development in the field of Hungarian educational management. The reason for the emphasis placed on quality concerning school management innovations may be explained by the transitional process of education in Hungary. Currently Hungary has one of the most decentralised systems of education in Europe. However, educational traditions are rooted in a centralised system, with great regional and local differences amongst schools, whilst the country experienced a dramatic economic crisis in the past decade. These factors challenge the decentralised way of governance and school-management. The ability to maintain and even to improve quality becomes a crucial issue or even a test of the system. Consequently, educational policy in Hungary is mainly concerned with the creation of changes and of new elements in order to maintain coherence and to develop quality.

The second point of concern is the methodology of the drafting and implementation of national level quality-improvement innovations. A decentralised system excludes the possibility of direct central intervention, and isolated local initiatives cannot substitute the full-fledged reform of the system. Since the direct national implementation of new models is not possible, the education policy should concentrate on developing new (often local and institutional) sources of innovation. Consequently, however, innovation may become a gradual and often fragmented process in the educational system. Interestingly, some members of the educational community experience this process as disorder, chaos and ad hoc improvisation.

In the case of Hungary, several instruments were created to bridge the gap between local and central educational policy issues. Therefore new (often local and institutional) sources of innovation were created. This report aims to present these instruments both in the context of three major projects of innovation and in a concise form of conclusions. The three selected programmes of innovation all concern the totality of the system and aim at strengthening the coherence and quality of the school system. All programmes have a major impact on school management.

The analytic framework of the OECD provides for both system-level and institutional innovations. This report focuses on the system-level, since Hungarian educational politics operate in a decentralised framework making system-level innovations crucial.

By adopting the approach of the OECD, this report approaches school education as a process starting from primary school until the end of secondary general education (or the receipt of the first vocational certificate), excluding the pre-primary sector. The statements and the data included in the report may be familiar for domestic readers, but the approach of the analysis might provide some added value.

II. THE EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT-RELATED POLICY ENVIRONMENT

2.1. Governance with shared responsibilities

The basic characteristics of administration of the Hungarian system of public education can be summarised in the following way¹:

(1) Public educational administration is highly decentralised with the responsibilities being shared by several participants;
 
(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 local² and the institutional levels; therefore, there are four levels of administration;
 
(4) The local and institutional levels of the educational administration are integrated into the general system of public administration, therefore, there is no organisationally separate educational administration;
 
(5) At the local and regional levels of public administration (and therefore educational administration) this is based on the system of self-governments, thus 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 a rather minor one, whilst the scope of responsibilities at the local level is great;
 
(7) The number of local authorities (local governments) is very high, while their average size is small.

It is important to emphasise the fact that the decentralised character of public educational administration in Hungary is the result of prolonged development. Although the basic features of the present system of shared responsibilities were formed after 1990; they have important predecessors. In 1989 the former incorporation of the local and central budgets was ended, whilst the state support of the local councils was based on a normative system, and the local governments were made interested in increasing their own revenues. In 1990 the former local councils were replaced by the politically autonomous local governments, which became the owners of the previously state-owned schools. 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 rates of salary. In 1993 the Act on Public Education provided the local governments with wide-ranging powers, and it annulled the tight central curricular regulations.

The decentralised character of the system can be presented by the distribution of school maintainers (owners) as well:³

Table 1.
Alteration of the number of schools operated by various school maintainers, 1993-1996

	Primary schools		General and vocational secondary schools		Total
Maintainer	1993/94	1996/97	1993/94	1996/97	1993/94	1996/97
Municipal self-government	3574	3470	605	591	4179	4061
County self-government	49	60	172	216	221	276
Central government	30	30	24	38	54	68
Church, denomination	94	145	42	63	136	208
Foundation, natural person	21	56	19	65	40	121
Other	3	4	5	7	8	11
Total	3771	3765	866	980	4637	4745

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

The governmental responsibility for public education at the national level is shared between several ministries. Furthermore, on one hand the Education Committee of the Parliament and on the other, various consultative bodies (see the section on other participants below) also play fairly important roles. The responsibility of the individual sectors lay formerly with the Ministry of Education. It is Ministry, which is responsible for the whole of education, including vocational education.

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 educational administration as well⁴. The general responsibility for the financing of public services and as part of that, the responsibility for 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.

In accordance with the 1993 Act on Public Education (and its 1996 Amendment) the Ministry of Education provides for the educational administration of sectors. This designates - in accordance with the Public Education Act - the following four main groups of tasks:

(1) Administrative tasks of sectors. A Great proportion of the administrative tasks of sectors is related with curricula and examinations. Since - it must be emphasised - in Hungary 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). It is also the task of the minister to issue the details of the examination requirements (with the basic requirements of the final examinations also being issued by the government). The minister of education - based on the recommendations of the consultative bodies - also decides on which textbooks and teaching aids to be listed in the national textbook register. It is important at this point to remember that the central curricular requirements allow for a very broad scope of decision-making for the local and institutional levels.

A part of the administrative competence of sectors concerning quality control is the publication of the National Experts' Register and National Examiners' Register. These registers play an important role in the assessment process of public education, since only those professionals may execute tasks of local assessment and examinations, which are registered in these documents. It is also the task of the minister to provide for the national-level professional services (including curriculum development and assessment services). It is important to note that - unlike in other countries - the respective ministry cannot practise direct control at the local or institutional levels. Even the organisational conditions are lacking for this.

(2) General regulative authority. The minister responsible for education practises a broad regulative authority. It is important to emphasise the fact that the Act on Public Education is rather elaborate concerning a number of fields, in which the minister - empowered by the Act - may use his/her authority to issue provisions of law. Some of these concern the administrative competencies of sectors discussed above; the difference in this case is that the Act entitl es or compels the minister to issue provisions of law.

In the field of curricula there are certain areas (concerning the disabled or the minorities) where the minister is required to issue the basic curricular principles: these are issued as decrees, or provisions of law. The issue of textbooks is regulated by ministerial decrees as well (for example, the process during which a manuscript or a book may become a textbook and may be included in the National Textbook Register). The regulation concerning the examination procedure is also dealt with in a similar way. The matters of recognition of foreign educational degrees are also regulated by decrees issued by the individual sectors.

The respective minister is provided with a minimum of regulatory tasks concerning institutional provisions. The minister is required to issue a provision of law on the conditions of private education and on the necessary permits concerning private educational service providers.

(3) Developmental Tasks. One of the most important group of tasks for the minister responsible for education is concerned with the development of public education. The Act on Public Education designates seven individual areas in which the minister of education is required to perform developmental tasks (see in 4.3.).

A ministerial task concerning quality control is the planning, operation and development of the system of examinations. A part of this concerns 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, i.e., the regular, sample-based measuring of educational achievement. Unlike many other European countries, there has been no methodical inspection of sectors in operation in the public education system of Hungary, since 1985. The tasks of control and inspection partly lie with the maintainers of schools, and are partly ensured by the operation of the system of assessment and estimation. 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 samples) - is the so-called system of registered pedagogical experts. Since the Modifications of 1996 and 1999 of the Act on Public Education, a National Centre for Educational Assessment and Examination (OKEV) was set up with regional branches, with the role of monitoring quality assessment and examinations.

As shown above, the central administration of sectors has hardly any rights to issue directives. The responsibility of sectors may almost exclusively be practised indirectly, out of which the most important is the responsibility of the determination of the basic curricular and additional standards, the elaboration of the financing preferences and the launching of developmental programmes. A significant proportion of the central administrative means may be put to use only after consultations are carried out with the social partners. Thus, 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.

Regional governments represent the regional responsibility for education. The county governments possess, on one hand, local competencies similar to those of the local governments (these are detailed below when discussing the local governments) and regional competencies on the other. One of their special regional tasks in public education is to provide educational services, which go beyond the basic provisions (excluding those, which involve 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 pupils whose settlement has no school in those cases in which the obligation to attend compulsory schooling may be fulfilled. It is also the task of the county to maintain institutions with regional functions, where the schooling needs of several settlements are met. The county also has to provide for 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.⁵ The importance of these pedagogical institutes has grown in the past few years due to the broadening of school autonomy and the strengthening of the demands for quality control.

Other specific tasks of county governments are regional co-ordination and planning. This group of tasks surfaced 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 belonged to the county governments according to the 1996 Amendment of the Public Education Act. It is the counties, which have to prepare the 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 interest groups of professional organisations. This plan was required to extend to a minimum of six years, and was to 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 additional 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.

Local governments represent the main responsibility of education. The Hungarian system of local governments is varying in character. Since 1990, some 3.100 local governments were established. More than 2.400 of these local governments operate an educational institution, out of which more than 1.800 maintain an eight-grade elementary school, i.e.; they cater for the 10-14-age group as well. More than 55% of these schools operate at settlements with a population less than 2.000 people. (See Table 2.)⁶ More than 200 local governments maintain a secondary school for the education of the 14-18-year-old youth. The full institutional network of public education is maintained only in the case of larger-size towns and cities.

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

Number of inhabitants 01.01. 1996	Number of local governments	Number of local governments that maintain at least an 8-grade elementary school
-500	992	31
500-999	697	344
1 000-1 999	668	629
2 000-4 999	514	510
5 000-9 999	135	134
10 000-1 9999	76	76
20 000-49 999	45	45
50 000-99 999	28	28
100 000-199 999	12	12
2 000 0007	1	1
Total	3 168	1 810

The Hungarian local governments and their institutions enjoy a high degree of autonomy. According to the Act on Local Governments, local governments are required to provide the inhabitants of the settlements with the services of kindergarten and basic school education. Within this general obligation the local government may decide on the foundation, the maintenance, the re-organisation or abolishment of an educational institution, and about establishing an association or a co-operation agreement with another local government. In order to encourage co-operation and coherence, ever since the initialisation of county level planning, the local governments had to take the contents of this plan into consideration. It is an important characteristic of the Hungarian administrative system, that the obligation to provide services does not mean that the local government actually have to maintain a school. The law allows for 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) to provide for educational services.

The most important element of administration concerning educational matters is the local governments' approval of the schools' pedagogical programmes and as part of that, the local curricula. During the adoption of the programmes the local governments can assert the demands of local educational policy. It must be underlined that during the adoption of the schools' pedagogical programmes the local governments may only examine the programmes' legal and financial aspects; they are not allowed to issue an opinion on the professional-pedagogical contents of those. This may only be carried out by experts listed in the National Experts' Register, and whose opinion the local governments have to commission.

It is the task of the local government to pass decisions in issues of educational administration (such as decisions on compulsory schooling) and to legally control the operation of schools. The most important form of fulfilling these tasks is the adoption of the documents that are drafted by the school staffs and which regulate the internal operation of 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 are required to provide. It is the notary of the local government who may regulate the observance of laws and regulations by the educational institutions (at all institutions in the given settlement, not just institutions maintained by the local government).

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 may be based on an expert opinion, on the report handed in by the school itself, or on the opinion of the school board.

Consequently, the national context of school management-related policies is characterised by:

• a central government which operates within legal frameworks, standards, competitive grants and innovation projects;
• regional governments with a relatively weak authority of co-ordination;
• a great number of local governments which provide the real policy environment of school management;
• a system, the entirety of which is based on the principle of shared responsibilities, consequently only the co-operation of the partners may benefit from decentralisation.

2.2. Competition as a driving force

The static description of the Hungarian educational system focuses on the decentralised character of governance. The dynamic description should emphasise the competition of schools as a key element of the system.

It is a characteristic trait of Hungarian educational management, that the central authorities have failed to protect the educational sector from the external socio-economic challenges of the past decade. However, efforts were made to become more open towards external challenges. These are external pressures, which stimulate competition. In the course of the recent decades, these external challenges were translated and introduced into the education system by various policy instruments and mechanisms. The most important challenge is the steady demographic decline (i.e. the rapid decrease of student population) which is directly reflected by the mechanism of per capita funding. Additionally, the 1985 Education Act eliminated school districts and introduced free parental (and student) choice of school. As a consequence, schools are interested in attracting students and schools without a sufficient number of students are often 'rationalised' (i.e. closed or merged with other schools) by their local maintainer. Since the late 80s this competition has had a full-fledged system of support: school programmes and curricula are strongly decentralised, and there is a well-functioning textbook market in existence. Since 1996 schools are obliged to create and follow their own pedagogical programmes and curricula.

Thus school directors and teachers are free to create their own supply in order to make choice possible and to capture the best mixture of students. One of the most visible products of the competition is a new type of secondary school with a mixed profile (optionally providing both general and vocational programmes). Education was previously provided in strictly separated school-types (secondary, technical secondary and trade schools); currently most secondary schools offer a carefully designed mixture of programmes. This environment helped to create a culture of competition: it is a widely shared belief that schools are responsible for their results.

The current educational discourse doesn't question the necessity of competition, but there is a growing concern about the criteria of success and failure. National charts of secondary schools (published by several journals) are under criticism, and there is a growing tendency to review the so-called 'pedagogical added-value' of schools (the relative development of students) instead of publishing Matura and university entrance examination results. The future broadening of the criteria of success may strengthen competition amongst schools with a non-traditional student population. The national assessment (and evaluation) system to be developed by the National Centre for Educational Examinations and Assessment (OKÉV) will make the ongoing dialogue more substantial and factual.

2.3. The position of stakeholders

The position of the school maintainers has already been described in the chapters above. As far as the other stakeholders are concerned, they are served in two ways. First, educational legislation established their rights of participation since the 80's. Secondly, schools are stimulated by competition to go beyond the traditional patterns of participation and be proactive in the interest of customer satisfaction. It is important to note that a significant portion of stakeholders are rather passive and alienated from any educational or community participation (unemployed, impoverished families, the Roma population).

According to the 1993 Act on Education, students are allowed to establish their own self-governments. Student bodies may freely manage their internal life and resources. As far as their rights of participation are concerned, student self-governments have the right to their own opinion in every aspect of organisational life. The elected leaders of student self-governments may attend the meetings of school boards.

Parents have the right of freely choosing a school. They may also establish non-public educational institutions, and those non-public schools, which are approved by the local government, are eligible for the standard formula grants from the annual state budget. Parents may elect representatives to help the work of the school and may attend the meetings of the school board.

School boards are the school-based organisations for local stakeholders. Parents, teaching staff and the school's maintainer all delegate representatives to the board in an equal number. The student self-government, the local organisation of national or ethnic (Roma) minority representation and the organisation of local employees may delegate one member each. School boards have the right to present proposals and opinions concerning every aspect of school life, especially in the establishment of organisational rules and the handling of parental complaints.

As the teaching staff, individual teachers may participate in school management. According to the 1993 Act on Education, teaching staff consists of the teachers and all the non-teaching employees with a higher education diploma. The teaching staff is the most important decision-making body of the school in educational-organisational matters. The teaching staff has decision-making powers (including approval and modification) in matters such as:

• the school's pedagogical programme;
• the organisational rules of the school;
• the annual work plan of the school;
• space management;
• regulation of profitable school activities (with special importance in vocational education);
• student disciplinary issues.

The teaching staff has the right to present its opinion in every aspect of school life. The school director must consult with the teaching staff concerning the following issues:

• distribution of teaching hours and individual working loads;
• delegation of special or extra tasks to teachers;
• the appointment and dismissal of deputy directors.

In the area of work-place regulations (working time, employment, salaries, holidays, compensations and social benefits) the school-based Council of Public Employees has the right to present opinions and proposals. Members of the Council of Public Employees are elected by the teaching and non-teaching employees of the school.

The regional level of the representation of interests and participation is shaped by current changes. In this level the focus is on vocational education and the ties between the regional planning and development agencies.

As far as the central level of interest representation and participation is concerned, there are three advisory (preparatory, opinion and proposal) bodies of the Minister of Education in existence.⁸ The National Council of Education is the overall advisory body of the Minister, consisting of 23 ordinary and 8 substitute members in the following distribution: 3 members are delegated by the Minister, 10 ordinary and 3 substitute members from the national professional ('pedagogical') organisations, 6 ordinary and 3 substitute members from teacher-training institutions, 2 ordinary and 1 substitute member from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the same amount of delegates from the national organisations of employers and chambers. The Council has an advisory role in content related issues (curricula, teaching materials, textbooks, examinations, in-service training). Business chambers and employers may delegate representatives since 1999.

The National Council for Educational Policy is a policy-oriented strategic advisory body of the Minister of Education. The national professional ('pedagogical') organisations, teachers' trade unions, national parent organisations, national student organisations, the national representation of local governments and the representatives of non-public school maintainers delegate 4 members each, whilst the concerned Ministries and other governmental organisations may each delegate 1 member.

According to the 1993 Act on Vocational Education, the National Council for Vocational Education has the similar advisory role in the field of vocational education. In this case the Minister of Education (previously the Minister of Labour) appoints the members for three year after consulting with the national representatives of employers, employees, economic chambers, school maintainers and the concerned Ministries. The Council has regional partners as well (County Labour Councils) with similar duties and rights.

The 1999 Law on Economic Chambers ensured the participation of another stakeholder. The regional Economic Chambers provide professional supervision for the practical training of students in vocational secondary education. Furthermore, the Chambers participate in the vocational examination of students and are also represented in the supervising boards of the regional re-training centres responsible for the re-training of the unemployed and the further education of adults.

III. MANAGEMENT TRADITIONS AND STYLES

3.1. Traditions and changes

The traditions of school management in Hungary were shaped in three important periods of educational development. In the period of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy equilibrium of central supervision and local control was created. In the inter-war period (1920-1940) this balance gradually diminished, and direct state control became dominant. The first part of the communist period (1948-1965) strengthened the previous Prussian patterns of educational governance. Since the early 70s a gradual decentralisation process was started, and local control regained its former position. As a result, Hungary has no single, coherent tradition of school management, but rather a mixture of three paradigms⁹:

• There is a strong tradition in institutional management, which considers the central level as its main reference point. This tradition concerns mainly (a) the proper administration of schools, and (b) the observance of legal directives.
• The second paradigm focuses on the innovation in schools, including human resource development, permanent learning, teamwork and project management.
• A third branch (if not paradigm) may be described as passive adaptation to the new external demands in a rapidly changing educational system.

It is important to note that the administrative paradigm is becoming more and more dysfunctional in the decentralised system. The following trends and mechanisms support the innovative paradigm:

• schools are forced to compete (see paragraph 2.2.);
• external resources for development (especially financial ones) are scarce, internal resources (such as human resources) become crucial;
• innovation supporting mechanisms (like the school innovation entitled KOMA) have been rooted in the system for at least two to three decades;
• the approval system of alternative (or experimental) school programmes has been liberalised two to three decades ago;
• there is a legally regulated training system of school managers.

The implementation of the National Core Curriculum has changed the relationship of school directors and teaching staff. Schools were forced to become project-oriented (pedagogical programme and school-based curriculum) and responsible for its results. The old-fashioned conflict between solidarity versus the central authorities is now meaningless, and the concepts of leadership, evaluation, sanctions, motivation etc. are taking place.

3.2. Local communities as the field of policy and management

Due to the decentralisation process, schools are currently evaluated by their local maintainers and by their clientele. Since local educational administration is part of the local or regional government, schools are accountable to the local community. Budget decisions, for instance, might favour local infrastructure development projects or social policies, instead of school development. School managers are forced to communicate with different non-educational groups, like local financial administrators, elected politicians, and neighbourhood representatives. In this learning process, school directors need indicators, which are (a) objective, (b) understandable for local non-education related participants, and (c) clear about school achievements. No wonder the market of school-required external testing, institutional evaluation, organisational development and consulting is growing, and reliance on external services becoming more and more natural.

compared to the others. The more popular and distinguished programme and curriculum the school has, the more attractive it becomes for potential students and for their parents.

Rural school management requires different skills. Some 20% of local governments, which maintain at least 8-grade elementary schools, have less than 1000 inhabitants¹⁰. In this environment relations are very personal and the local control is strong. Competition is limited (although urban schools attract the best students in the 4th, 6th and 8th grades). Consequently, rural schools tend to be the community centres of the settlement.

3.3. The new role of the Ministry

Decentralising and sometimes deregulating daily administration, and centralising some strategic, core activities is a long learning process. The mental aspect of this learning can hardly be described here, but there are some objective indicators. The depth of this learning process may be proved by the fact that despite the acute problems of equity (relatively high dropout rate, growing difference between student achievements according to parental background and geographical location), the central administration avoided direct administrative intervention, and created new tools of policy-making. Since the 80's, the following set of indirect policy instruments were created to ensure coherence and quality in the system:

• Legislation and legal regulation. Horizontally, the functional differentiation of legal regulation (legislation, law modification, provisions for decrees and legal standards, obligation of local partners to establish co-operation), and vertically the development of regulative capacities in the local level (local government decrees).
• Professional training of the public administration. This covers the use of the newly established National Centre for Educational Examination and Assessment, and the support (training) of the independent local governments.
• Development of educational funding. The existing (normative) funding system incorporates resource allocation and changes encouragement based on policy-analysis.
• Strengthening the elements of planning, participation and consultation. Since 1993, the central legislation aims to strengthen the coherence of the decentralised system by stimulating the interested parties to co-operate.
• Publication of professional standards. In this area, one can experience a remarkable, if poorly co-ordinated, development. The main financial standards of institutional maintenance (class sizes, teaching hours, per capita grants) have been established. The field of curricula and student achievements still lack public standards; this should be developed by the new National Centre for Educational Examination and Assessment. The participants interested in a decentralised system may use standards for both internal management and for benchmarking. In the forthcoming period, institutional benchmarking may become one of the most important tools of self-regulation in the system.
• System-level evaluation to mobilise the interested participants and to support new development policies. The sector-wide concept of evaluation is still missing, but there is a wide consensus, that it should not be limited to student achievements. The 1999 modification of the Education Law and the establishment of the National Centre for Educational Examination and Assessment will strengthen this area in the future.
• Strategic communication and the encouragement of educational publicity. The use of social publicity to discuss the strategic goals of the central management constitutes a separate tool of educational policy. The participants of the decentralised system may transform the messages of the central management to particular activities by using a 'communication line' (business conferences, publications, marketing of educational services).
• Creation of self-regulatory mechanisms (accreditation schemes, language examinations, the development of the National Register of Vocations) and policy fields (in-service teacher training). The main features of self-regulatory activities are independent operation, openness towards central priorities, and the ability to provide permanent learning and self-improvement.
• The provisions for and distribution of innovation funds according to central policy priorities. The distribution of various innovation-funds shows increasing co-operation, partly resulting from strategic communication. For instance, the priority on quality development appeared in every innovation fund since 1998. The 1994-1998 work of the Soros Foundation presents an example of co-operation between the resource allocation of public and private innovation funds.
• Establishment and initialisation of central innovation programs. These central programs may even operate without legal support. The programs carry strategic messages to the school level through voluntary implementation and learning. On a more advanced level, policy-makers develop and select local innovations in order to design a central program.
• Supporting the creation of networks and partnerships in the system. The institutionalisation of central innovation programs and local initiatives may be effectively supported by the means of professional self-organisation.
• Initialisation and support of training, the creation of developmental interfaces in the system. Training focused on the participants is one of the most important management tools in decentralised systems. The most important developmental interface of the past decade was created in 1996-1999, when the new system of in-service teacher training was established.
• International co-operation. International programs (OECD, PHARE, Socrates, Leonardo) mediate between external requirements and professional standards, which have an important role from the viewpoint of internal coherence and external approval of the educational system.
• Support and management of research and development. R+D activities are very important in gaining reliable information concerning the realities of the decentralised system. Development and innovation policies on the central level cannot be developed without the evidence provided by R+D.

Obviously, the policy instruments listed above are to some extent overlapping. This remarkably rich list of instruments shows that central authorities have a wide choice of regulative and managing tools - even in a radically decentralised system. According to the Hungarian experience, the actual utilisation of policy instruments depends on the existence (and on the continuous development) of the following conditions:

• System-level interest to use the rich set of policy instruments;
• The level of interaction amongst the participants (including the capacity to react and pro act) which can make the set of encouraging policy instruments (per capita grants, standards, applications to innovation funds) very effective;
• Openness and publicity to help the self-orientation and decision-making of participants;
• A strong background of educational services, where service providers are motivated through self-interest to support innovations;
• Legal framework and organisational patterns (planning, social partnership, innovation networks etc.) for the co-operation of participants.

3.4. The scope of school autonomy

Schools are responsible for their results. In order to become responsible, the existing legislative framework provides them a wide autonomy in the management¹¹.

The employer of the teaching and non-teaching personnel of an educational institution is the school director. The director 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 director assigns the tasks of the teachers after consulting the opinion of the school departments. The school staff decides the participation in in-service training. The director, who can invite external experts and the departments in this task, carries out the evaluation of the work of individual teachers.

As far as the content of education is concerned, in educational-pedagogical issues it is the teaching staff who is the decision-maker. The school-based pedagogical program and curriculum, the applied programs 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 staff can be highlighted by the fact that they can file an appeal at a court if their maintainer does not approve of their pedagogical program.

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

The school staff prepares the annual plan of the school's operation. In recent years the decisions of the school staff has seen a boost in appreciation, since, as we have seen, almost all important issues concerning educational contents and school operations 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 government. These processes require school staffs that are ready to be constructive, ready to make agreements and compromises, and require school managers who are able to carefully prepare such processes.

3.5. The professional training of school directors and teachers

The proper management of the above-described responsibilities requires new knowledge and skills compared to the traditional school management paradigms. Since the early 90's university-based innovations started to create management schools for school directors and teachers. One of the most innovative schools (KÖVI) was established by a Dutch-Hungarian joint project. Most management schools offer presentations and intensive training, practice and the writing of dissertations combined with the elements of long-distance learning. Currently management schools have regulated legal status: (a) their diplomas are accepted as university-level post-graduate diplomas, (b) graduation involves advancement in the central salary scale and (c) graduation is becoming a sine qua non in the competitive application for the job of school director. There is a growing belief that the job of school director is not only a primus inter pares among teachers, but also a different profession with clearly definable set of knowledge and skills. Professional training is curbed by the relatively weak legal position and humble financial rewards of school directors. Consequently open places for school directors attract few applicants.

Conferences and seminars are a new form of professional development. In the past decade a kind of 'conference business' emerged with clear functional differentiation as far as the content, the networking and the prestige are concerned.

It is important to note, those teachers with managerial aspirations can study in management schools too. The five years long mandate of the school directors and the competitive job application system make ambitious teachers interested in management studies in advance.

3.6. The challenges of institutional management

Most Hungarian schools work in a delicate policy field shaped by the very different expectations of the local government, the parents and the teaching staff. School directors have to mediate between these poles, to create a mid-term strategy for the institution and to implement it. These are challenging tasks with the following obstacles:

Strategy-development:

• the current legislative framework defines weak authority for school directors combined with universal responsibility and sophisticated compulsory consultative processes;
• most local maintainers are only interested in the costs of the institutional strategy;
• customer-driven competition of schools often favours short-term thinking;
• generally speaking, stakeholder involvement is weak in the system;
• the four year long mandate of the local government, the five year long mandate of the school director and the mid-term validity of the school-based pedagogical program and curriculum are poorly harmonised;
• generally speaking, the planning capacity of local and regional participants is weak, especially concerning external resources;
• since 1990 there is a remarkable discontinuity in the educational policies of the three consecutive governments;
• the school director is 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.

Motivation and implementation:

• teachers are poorly paid but protected by the Act of Public Employees, thus risk-taking and extra work are not easily acceptable tasks;
• school directors can hire new teachers, but firing teachers is a long and painful court procedure;
• many teachers have second and third jobs to earn more;
• there are no resources for wage differentiation;
• it is difficult to carry out internal assessment, self-evaluation and quality control without the rewards;
• there are only limited traditions of collegial co-operation in the current school-subject oriented organisational culture.

Fund-raising:

• the current level of central funding hardly covers more than the teachers' salaries and basic expenses of the school;
• additional local funding depends on the economic/financial situation of the local governments, consequently there are very big differences in the financial support of schools according to regions and types of settlements;
• competitively distributed innovation funds may help innovation, but too many projects can harm the core functions and strategic focus of the institution.

These challenges require hard work, and the compensation for it seems to be poor. Consequently, the job of school director is not a very popular one. Most applications for the job come from inside the teaching staff. The legal regulations of the profession support this as well. According to the 1993 Act on Education, those persons applying for school director's job should have (a) college or university diploma in education, (b) 5 years professional experience in education and (c) an open tenure in education. The carrier path of ex-directors is yet to be developed.

IV. ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE AND PRACTICE OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

4.1. Finances¹²

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. It very rarely happens 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 funding by various rights but the most important form is the formula grant. Based on standard formula the local governments are automatically given the per capita grants. Among these grants we can find the grant for education (called the per capita grant), which is regulated year by year by the Budgetary Act. There are a variety of normative educational grants, which are always granted for the number of pupils attending a specific grade, a special educational program (or a certain type of school). In 1998, for example, the local governments were given 72.000 HUF for each six grader in basic education. There is an additional formula grant for the pupils following a national minority education program. The number of such formulae is fairly high (there were 57 of them in 1997).

Almost all of the state grants are lump sums, i.e. can be used by the local governments freely, and local governments are not compelled to spend these grants on education. The state grants given specifically for educational provisions in 1996 covered about half of the total educational expenditure of the local governments (See Table 3.). 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 the salaries of the teachers have to be covered from the central grants as well and from the local governments' own incomes.

The maintainers of the public and private institutions - in case their institutions fulfil their basic legal obligations and, as a consequence, 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 the equivalent of the amount the local governments spend on their schools above the normative state grant in the previous year.

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. The employers channel one part of this directly to the training institutions; the other part is channelled to the national Vocational Training Fund¹³.

The local governments finance their educational institutions from their own incomes, so in Hungary the amounts devoted to public education basically depend on the budgetary decisions of the local governments. The incomes of 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), local taxes levied by the local governments, the proportion of the general income taxes transferred from the central incomes to the local governments, income from accumulation, an d other income (such as support for health service). According to law, the local governments are not compelled to spend normative state grants 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 grants.

Local governments enjoy a high degree of freedom in shaping the local structure of financial administration. They may decide autonomously what proportion of available resources they wish to spend on investments or on operational expenses, and what proportion of the operational expenses can be spent on salaries.

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 the entire Act on Public Employees and the Act on Education). Depending on the local possibilities and on the results of the local bargaining process, the institutional budget may provide for more than just the provision of the minimal compulsory tasks.

For the past few years there has been 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 which qualifies to the conditions laid down in the legal regulations (however, this brings a very modest extra income to the foundations). Furthermore, the vocational training institutions may 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 to them by the economic chambers and could be directly supported by economic organisations.<$ According to the 1996 Act on the Vocational Support and the Support for Development in Vocational Education, every company is compelled to pay 1.5 percent of their wage-expenditure for vocational training. This amount may be paid to the Vocational Training Fund, or it may be given directly to a vocational training institution chosen by the company, but the company itself may provide for training out of this amount either for the school population or for its own employees.> 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). The local governments control the financial management of these institutions.

4.2. Management of human resources

In this part we choose to focus only on analysing the current position of teachers in the Hungarian school system. In order to do this, training, employment, carrier paths, salaries and in-service teacher training issues are discussed.

Teachers with college or university diplomas receive a rather theoretic education (with the exception of the kindergarten and the first four grades of primary school education). There is a wide belief in the system that the necessary knowledge and skills of teaching can only be required in the course of years. There are no big differences amongst teacher training institutions; school directors cannot make a selection on the basis of the origin of diplomas.

As we have already described in the previous chapters, employment is regulated by shared responsibilities as well. Since teachers are public employees, central administration maintains the framework-type regulation of employment; the 1993 Act on Public Education (amended in 1996 and 1999) defines the employment, the special allowances and the minimum teaching hours in detail. In the Act on Public Employees, the central administration sets a national classification of salaries for teachers as well. The actual employment, however, happens on the local level. School directors hire and fire, and the local government pays the salary. Local governments, just like school directors have to pay the centrally fixed minimum salary but they can freely decide about the potential additions. Teachers' salaries cannot be raised centrally either. Since local governments receive state grants in the form of lump sums, they may invest the central increase in other areas as well. This shared model creates a space for local bargaining and requires co-operation and consensus seeking. Since 1990 the economic recession and budget cuts made local bargaining unimportant, but steady economic growth might cause changes in the future.

The carrier paths of teachers reflect the concept of public employment: there are no carrier scales and salaries depend on the age and qualification of the person. Since the educational system lacks objective and comparable points of assessment (like national testing or examinations), there is no clear success criteria for the evaluation of teachers. Furthermore, there are no public standards concerning the responsibility, the quality and the ethics of the teaching profession. The scarce resources make school-based wage differentiation difficult and conflict generating. One possible way out of this is to study school management and apply for the job of school director. Most teachers follow a different approach; in the new in-service teacher training system (see below) there is a wide range of possibilities to obtain second diplomas or more labour market oriented courses (ICT, languages, management).

The in-service training of teachers has lately become one of the most important fields of action for educational governmental policy. The 1993 Act on Public Education and its 1996 and 1999 Amendments has significantly reformed the system of responsibilities and created a link between in-service training, employment and salaries. The Act rules that teachers entering employment in 1998 and after will have to take a special qualifying examination within a given time frame. The other ruling of the Act makes 120 hours in-service teacher training compulsory for all teachers at least once in every seven years, the participation in which will be acknowledged with a compulsory pay rise. The responsibilities of the central educational government in the operation of the new system are to ensure the financial conditions (the Act earmarks 3% of the yearly educational budget for this purpose) and to carry out the accreditation, the evaluation and the quality control of in-service teacher training programs. The other key holders of responsibility in this area are the school directors, who have to prepare a five-year inset plan and corresponding yearly schedules concerning their teachers' participation. The programs are selected from the offer of the market by school staffs and teachers. The local governments (the maintainers) have a limited role in this system; they disseminate information and handle the finances. Within their limited financial means they also have the possibility to help realise their own priorities in the inset of school heads and teachers. Those providing in-service teacher training courses (county pedagogical institutes, teacher education colleges and universities, private enterprises, professional associations, churches, etc.) have to ensure the supply of the market. Basing this service on the principles of the market is a brand new feature in Hungarian practice.

4.3. Development policies

The 1999 Modification of the Act on Public Education defines the following development tasks for the Minister of Education: (1) design of the mid- and long term development plan of education, (2) management and development of a national examination system, (3) monitoring of school network and school structure in the country, (4) analysis of pedagogical problems of the system, development of new pedagogical methods, (5) provision of the institutional and financial conditions of educational research, (6) professional help for regional planning, (7) support for the experts in the textbook approval procedure and (8) help the development of curricula, assessment and in-service training in order to have the necessary supply.

These traditional areas do not cover the development activities of the Ministry. Usually system-wide development programs start where decision-makers hope for system-wide impacts and consider the local initiatives insignificant.

In the 1994-98 period two major development (so called 'modernisation') programs were carried out. The Sulinet Programme connected every Hungarian secondary school to the Internet, and the new system of in-service teacher training was established. According to the first experiences, the current managing capacity of the system tolerates 2-3 parallel programs and not more.

Development policies are initiated on the local level as well. Aside from the traditional professional movements mostly concerning alternative pedagogical ideas, there is a wide variety of local development projects. (The presence of non-state education innovation support may explain this phenomenon). One of the most important development project is called 'movement of self-developing schools'. With the support of the Soros Foundation some schools started to learn about modern management and applying it in education. Increasing numbers of self-developing schools participate in regular training.

While centrally developed programs are mostly supported from the annual state budget, local innovations are financed by separate innovation funds. As far as the significance and the invested resources are concerned, the impact of the Soros Foundation seems to be important. Between 1994-98 the Soros Foundation gave up ad hoc support and created educational development programs. The public Fund for Educational Modernisation (KOMA) distributes smaller resources and focuses on the school-level, small-scale initiatives.

V. CASE ONE: THE CREATION OF SCHOOL BASED PEDAGOGICAL PROGRAMS AND CURRICULA

This case presents a national-level innovation, which changed the way of curriculum control and development in Hungarian schools. Furthermore, this policy raised curriculum development from the previous pattern of simple adjustments to the level of school management.

Project title, Location and Starting Date: Implementation of the National Core Curriculum of all-Hungarian kindergartens and schools. The (130/1995. X.26) Government decree introduced the National Core Curriculum. Since then a gradual grade by grade implementation has started.

Organisation in charge: Ministry of Education in co-operation with primary and secondary schools, with the National Institute for Public Education and with the county pedagogical institutes.

Overview: The project aimed to implement the National Core Curriculum in Hungarian kindergartens, primary and secondary schools. The National Core Curriculum only defined a core centrally, which means that the schools themselves should fill the required knowledge, skills and attitudes as well as the rest of the curriculum. Thus implementation meant a complex process where top-down policy (legislation and professional support) was combined with the stimulation of school level innovation. Kindergartens and schools had three years to write their own pedagogical programs and school-based curricula on the basis of the common requirements. Pedagogical programs and school-based curricula were first approved by the teaching staff then by the local government (or by other maintainers of schools).

This program was a full-fledged national level innovation in school management, because: It shook up the traditional ways of curriculum management in schools. Previously Hungarian schools had limited possibilities to formulate their own mission and program supply applied to the needs of the local community. The two-level regulation of the National Core Curriculum made the above mentioned elements compulsory. Thus the previously passive content management became more active and innovative. It created new values, know-how and culture in schools. In the establishment of the school-based pedagogical program and curriculum appeared new innovative elements in a much broader sense than content development. As far as the inner world of schools is concerned, this focused on the design of mission and content required teamwork. In the school environment, the tools and the demand for the need assessment in the local community represented something new. The pedagogical program and the school-based curriculum created dialogues, which regulate schoolwork in a conscious and evidence-based way. As a particularly risky, open-ended development project, it delegated the responsibilities for the innovation's end product to the schools themselves. Pedagogical programs and school-based curricula strengthened the rich variety of schools by professional and legal means. The responsibility for the institutional strategy laid down in the pedagogical program is carried out by the school itself. This shift strengthened the accountability of school management (including the educational work), and considerably limited the survival chances of the management strategy, based on passive adaptation. Concrete strategy: Teachers in Hungary traditionally follow the curriculum (and textbooks) instead of writing it. Thus the policy initiative had no competence base in the schools. The main challenge of the implementation strategy was to fill up the new framework-type content regulation with high quality school-based curricula in a limited time. The implementation strategy pointed out (a) the mobilisation of participants for innovation, and (b) the provision of professional services as the solution.

The policy initiative was first published in an expert paper called 'The Implementation of National Core Curriculum'.¹⁴ It also defined the main elements of the implementation strategy. The strategy was based on three pillars: (1) competence building, (2) tool development and (3) use of information technology and multiplying mechanisms (training of the trainers) in dissemination. Central innovators trained and accredited new strata of local change agents called pedagogical experts. Pedagogical experts (teachers, school directors and pedagogical advisers) learned to facilitate the school-based innovation process. The implementation strategy of the school was left to the school director and to the teaching staff.

In order to stimulate innovations new policy instruments were introduced:

• For the rapid training of school directors and teachers, the method of 'training of trainers' was generally applied; the National Institute for Public Education provided multiple courses in innovation management for the voluntarily listed professionals of regional pedagogical institutes.
• The National Institute for Public Education created a supply of school-based curricula by selecting the best of the applying local initiatives. The dissemination of the supply of the 'curriculum bank' was managed by a regionally settled, Internet-based electronic network. (Between November and December 1997 schools downloaded the curricula 11851 times)¹⁵.
• The joint tender of the Ministry of Education and the Educational Modernisation Fund (KOMA) resulted in 19 schools winning with their 'model curricula'. The textbook publishers (coming form the business sector) produced their curricular approaches as well.

Innovation and effectiveness:¹⁶

Although the Ministry provided legal basis and professional teams, published materials on the required form and the content of school-based pedagogical programs, for many schools the idea remained a metaphor. The task of programme writing was perceived in various ways in schools. Here are some common elements of the various approaches:¹⁷

• collection and synthesis of external and internal demands (parents, students, other schools) towards the school;
• analysis of school resources (including human ones);
• drafting the mission and vision of the school;
• describing a new organisational order of the school.

Pedagogical programs were developed in teams, and teachers usually participated enthusiastically:

On the national average, 78% of teachers participated in curriculum design, 66% in lesson plan writing, 50% in organisational self-evaluation and 31% in writing the pedagogical program. In many schools surveys and questionnaires were developed and used.

In the course of school-based curriculum design, higher stakes were taken. School-based curriculum is the practical embodiment of the pedagogical program but it also defines the teaching hours of particular subjects and study areas (thus defining individual teachers' salaries as well). According to empirical research, schools followed two strategies. In the first case, schools took count of teaching hours (approved by the local maintainer) as a framework and started serious self-evaluation. In this case the conflicts emerged in the very first phase when the school and its local maintainer started bargaining about the amount of teaching hours. On the basis of the self-evaluations, institutions defined priorities and formed the curriculum according to them. In the second case, schools allowed for the teachers to propose minor changes in their areas, and added them to the modified curriculum. This concise approach caused conflicts at the end of the innovation process when the required amount of teaching hours (i.e. required funding) became visible for the staff.

Program writing and curriculum-design strengthened the collective identity of the schools. The innovative work helped teachers to learn new methods of teamwork, and broadened their view on education.

The fact that legal frames were filled up with local content in the course of a partner-oriented innovation program required non-traditional policy-establishment patterns. The unusually significant resources spent on the innovation program, and the challenges of networking caused difficulties. The Internet-based curricular bank couldn't provide the optimal service neither in a quantitative nor in a qualitative sense. The non-traditional way of contracting out some training and 'road-show' activities to private forms caused the first modern corruption case in the implementation. The local and regional differences of pedagogical programs and school-based curricula clearly showed the quality differences of regional pedagogical institutes and the very different capabilities to adapt on the part of the schools.

VI. CASE TWO: THE QUALITY CONTROL OF THE NEW IN-SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING SYSTEM

Project title, Location and Starting Date: The creation of a system of quality control for the new in-service teacher training system of Hungary.

Organisation in charge: Ministry of Education in co-operation with primary and secondary schools, with the Information and Methodological Centre for In-Service Teacher Training.

Overview: The in-service training of teachers has lately and visibly became one of the most important fields of action for educational governmental policy. The 1993 Act on Public Education and its 1996 Amendment rules that teachers entering employment in 1998 and after will have to take a special qualifying examination within a given time frame. The other ruling of the Act made 120 hours of in-service teacher training compulsory (dismissed in 1999) for all teachers at least once in every seven years, the participation in which will be acknowledged with a compulsory pay raise. The responsibilities of the central educational government in the operation of the new system are to ensure the financial conditions (the Act earmarks 3% of the yearly educational budget for this purpose) and to carry out the accreditation, the evaluation and the quality assurance of the in-service teacher training programs. Schools receive per capita (per teacher) grants for in-service teacher training to spend it freely in the training market of accredited programs. The other key holders of responsibility in this area are the school directors, who have to prepare a five-year plan and corresponding yearly schedules concerning their teachers' participation. The programs are selected from the course offer on the market by the school staffs and the teachers. Those providing in-service teacher training courses (county pedagogical institutes, teacher education colleges and universities, private enterprises, professional associations, the churches, etc.) have to ensure the supply of the market. Basing this service on the principles of the market is a brand new feature in Hungarian (and international) practice. The establishment of an in-service teacher training system (including its program accreditation scheme) created a self-regulating, quasi-market within school education, which is (a) open to adopt the actual governmental policy priorities, (b) ready to function without external administrative inputs and (c) able to work and learn in a reflective way. The heart of the system is the accreditation scheme, which is described in the following paragraphs.

This program was a full-fledged innovation in school management on a national level because: It forced schools to create their own human resource-management policies. With the help of central resources (financial support, open supply of programs, legal frames) schools must prepare five year plans for in-service training. These plan shows that the central management of education considers school-oriented and planned investment in their human resources as a value and a force of integration. School directors had to think over the benefits and efficiency of mass scale in-service training. Quality is ensured by the teamwork of suppliers, accreditors and buyers. The accreditation scheme guarantees that professional boards do not make decisions on the necessity of training programs. Accreditation only provides a general quality control, and the real decision is made on the market of in-service training programs where buyers (schools with guaranteed buying forces) and the program providers meet. As a risky, open-ended development project, it delegated the responsibility for the innovation's end product to the schools themselves. Previously, the professional skills and competencies of the teaching staff was a hardly changeable capacity for the school director. The new system of in-service teacher training created a chance for the gradual reconstruction of the structure and quality of human resources in schools. In the meantime, school management and the teaching staff became responsible for the qualitative development of human resources.

Concrete strategy: The policy initiative was created in an intensive co-operation between the Ministry of Education and an educational consulting company. The Ministry provided clear political frames:

• the in-service teacher training system should be market-oriented;
• state support goes directly to schools;
• no one should have monopoly in programme provision;
• the quality of training should be higher than before.

The new system, which was set in the 277/1997. Government Decree and modified in 1999 reflected the above described policy priorities. With the state grants teachers may choose accredited training courses including graduate and postgraduate courses and vocational courses offered by the National List of Vocational Training Programs (OKJ). Programs provided by the Council of Europe or by EU-Socrates, or training in the neighbouring countries and Israel (for minority schoolteachers) are also eligible. The strict separation of program foundation and establishments of programs further opened the supply market. Any accredited provider may establish founded (i.e. accredited) programs. Programs can be founded (via accreditation) by any person or legal entity. Thus by letting in private experts, business companies and schools themselves, a radical growth of providers could be seen. Especially the latter one promises interesting results in the future, when horizontal learning will become more important. Currently, the most important providers are the universities, colleges and county pedagogical institutes, but no one has monopoly and the market is open. Since the system is relatively new, it would be too early to speak about trends, but market shares of different providers can change radically in the future.

The most innovative part of the new system is the accreditation scheme. According to the current regulations, (1999) the Ministry of Education does not exercise direct influence in the quality control of training programs.¹⁸ The idea is that an accreditation process carries out an entrance control to the training market, but the schools themselves test the programs. The accreditation procedure is carried out by a semi-autonomous ministerial centre called Methodological and Information Centre for In-Service Teacher Training with the help of trained accreditation experts.¹⁹ Program proposals are written and submitted on the basis of a standard format. The format (just like the accreditation criteria) is accessible on the Internet and in hard copy as well. The design of the format forced potential suppliers to change the traditional concept of in-service teacher training in Hungary, and pushed traditional and ad hoc ex cathedra lecturing out of the state-supported area of the market:

• the minimum length of a program is 30 hours;
• the supplier freely determines the cost of the program;
• without elements of intensive training, teamwork and practice, programs can hardly be accredited;
• the concept of assessment and final evaluation of students is a compulsory part of the program;
• internal quality control is also a compulsory part of the program.

The procedures of quality control are applied in the connections of program founder - program provider and the program providing school. Furthermore, there is a prescribed set of quality control procedures laid down in order to apply it for the relationship between the (a) program founder - program starter and for (b) the program providing school.

This is a risky and very untraditional solution. Choice happens at the school-level, outcomes are open ended, and the final responsibility for the efficiency of state support lays with the school. In the education sector there are no traditions of choice and responsibility, on the contrary, teachers (like students) were previously seen as mere objects of injection of modern knowledge.

Innovation and effectiveness:

The first results of a national representative survey show different school management strategies emerging side-by side.²⁰ The data on the reaction to the new system reflects both mechanic approval and rule-following and strategic thinking combined by teamwork in planning. As far as customer satisfaction is concerned, initial data shows a rather immature and complex situation (with very interesting differences between school directors and teachers)²¹:

Statement	Approved by
	School directors	Teachers
There are many low-quality programs on the market	84%	77%
Choice is up to geographical distance of the training	74%	78%
Choice in the training market is too big	66%	35%

The topics of the most popular programmes show the same traditional attitude with interesting inner dynamics:²²

Another test of the innovation is the actual functioning of the system. The accreditation scheme works smoothly, and the participants of the program market adapted their development work to the standards of accreditation. There is a growing consciousness amongst customers of the market. The management of the in-service training system has already established the procedures of monitoring and strategic planning.

VII. CASE THREE: THE CREATION OF THE COMENIUS 2000 QUALITY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Project title, Location and Starting Date: COMENIUS 2000 Quality Development Programme in Public Education, a system-wide national program started in 1999/2000

Organisation in charge: Ministry of Education (and its COMENIUS Programme Centre) in co-operation with kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, student hostels, and local governments (over 500 institutions altogether). Quality management consultants (including companies) lead the actual implementation.

Overview: The project aims to create an education-friendly sector-oriented interpretation of quality management and to establish an experimental development project with kindergartens, schools, student hostels and local governments on a voluntary basis. The goal of the program is to establish the approach and methodology, which can help schools to improve their daily work in a conscious, permanent and partner-oriented way. The program began in the first half of 2000 in 450 institutions; later more institutions can join. Institutions were selected in open tender by a professional body of the Ministry of Education.

In the second half of 2000, the quality management model for the school maintaining local governments will be developed. Those elements will be new in European dimensions too, and they will have a strategic importance in the de-centralised Hungarian educational system.

The COMENIUS 2000 Quality Development Programme is significantly different compared to the mainstream of current European initiatives:

• The mainstream European approach identified quality management as an external (often state run) support and evaluation of schools and as a permanent monitoring of educational outputs. The Hungarian approach focuses on the internal improvement of educational and managerial processes in schools.
• The Hungarian approach rejected the unselected introduction of economy-based quality models (ISO, TQM, and EFQM) into education, thus cutting through the ongoing European debates about the optimal model. Instead of this, Hungarian developers created a quality development (educational) model of sectors, the standards of which may be satisfied with various quality management models. This fortunate approach made it possible to invite people and organisations representing very different philosophies of quality development.
• The Hungarian approach defines two levels of institutional and local (local government based) quality development. The modular structure of the two levels makes it possible for school managers to design a mid-term quality development strategy for the school. The 'easier' first level is about continuous partner orientation and needs assessment in the local community. The second level is more challenging, requiring the establishment of total quality management.

	1997	1998
Information technology	1.	1.
School subjects	2.	2.
Pedagogy	3.	3.
National Core Curriculum	4.	4.
Methodology	5.	2.
Non-traditional	6.	7.
Psychology	7.	5.
Foreign languages	8.	6.
This program was a full-fledged national level innovation in school management, because: It makes quality development an internal issue in schools and local governments. The central (external) instruments of quality policy have a rather stimulating role. The program offers tested and differentiated models for the participants of education. Instead of the previous 'island-like' innovations, the program offers models on a national level. Its innovative and differentiated structure ensures that every school and local government can choose the level and time of joining the program. The success of the program depends on the co-operation of the participating partners. There is no participating partner (institutions, consultants, and central management) who could make a successful development work alone. This interdependency enforces a new culture of co-operation. The business sector has an important role in the implementation of the program. Part of the quality consultants and consulting firms are coming from the business sector. Schools and the business sector should find the way to work together for educational goals. In the meantime, the business sector of consulting must learn the education-oriented COMENIUS-model and the specific characteristics of education.

Concrete strategy: Since decentralised educational systems have too few traditional policy instruments to ensure quality, the focus (and partial responsibility) of quality control is being put on the schools themselves. The COMENIUS 2000 Quality Development Programme aims to create the necessary know-how and attitudes in voluntary schools in order to make them capable of assuming some responsibility for their quality. Differently from many European countries, tools of central responsibility (control and assessment of quality) were separated from the program, as areas to be developed separately. The COMENIUS 2000 Quality Development Programme is concerned only with the internal quality development of schools. In the mid-term, however, state developed external assessment and internal quality control can work together.

In the course of the program, a new educational quality development model (the COMENIUS-model) was developed, 1300 institutions applied for participation (some 500 were approved) and the training of quality management consultants (mainly for the new model) was started. According to the strategy, a new cohort of institutions can join next year. The first (basic) level of the COMENIUS-model will be gradually introduced as a compulsory quality control scheme, while the more sophisticated second level will remain optional.

Independent consultants working closely with schools will make the implementation. Schools can select consultants to work with. The schools will assess the work of the consultants, and their state support will depend on the satisfaction of schools.

As far as the system-wide implementation is concerned, the concept is to use the championing schools as multipliers in the form of horizontal learning (teachers will train teachers) instead of continuing the relatively expensive support of consultants.

Innovation and effectiveness:

One of the most interesting aspect of the program is that the concrete idea was selected from the flourishing consulting and development market of education. Some companies and private experts have been experiencing with school-based quality management years before the central policy was initiated. Consequently, the creation of the COMENIUS-model was a joint effort of four groups: (a) policy-makers, (b) business consultants, (c) school directors and (d) mainstream educational experts. The communication was difficult, since the control of the discourse by any of the mentioned groups would have caused an irrelevant model in terms of education. Some of the expert teams responsible for the development had various backgrounds and these 'brokers' had an important role in averting initial differences of the participating persons and cultures. The quality concept was defined jointly. This concept emphasises the service and partner orientation, and permanent development; instead of the passive responses to central requirements.

Since the program was just started, currently there are no results, but some preliminary facts and challenges are experienced. The enthusiasm of the application phase was a positive sign. However, long-term implementation will bring up some serious challenges as well. The motivation and inclusion of teachers without adequate financial support can become difficult. The relatively weak position of school directors and the uneven performance of quality management consultants might cause further problems in the project implementation. The tension between the support of schools and business consultants is not likely to diminish during the initial period.

VIII. CONCLUSIONS: PATTERNS OF INNOVATION

As a conclusion of the above described school management innovation projects we will try to summarise the main characteristics of the innovation pattern in Hungary.

The most important characteristic in Hungarian innovation policies in education is, that the policies of legislation, daily administration and innovation are not clearly separated. Even policies with traditionally administrative character have a strongly innovation-oriented content. This situation differs from those international patterns, where innovation appears as a separated, challenging and somewhat new area of traditional administration. In the radically decentralised educational system of Hungary however, the coherence and quality of the system cannot be maintained by traditional means of educational administration.

The innovation-oriented policy model has the following characteristics:

1. in the decentralised context of education, part of the daily problems are solved by local, small-scale innovations;
2. educational changes start in an intermediary level, where experts, for-profit and non-profit organisations launch small-scale innovation programs;
3. the innovation capacity of traditional institutions of research and development is limited;
4. in the decentralised context of education a market of professional service emerged;
5. the decentralised context of educational policy-making forces central authorities to become open and susceptible towards innovation; central authorities carry out the work of selection and support rather than direct intervention;
6. there is an emerging set of solutions which make central authorities capable of initiating reform and disseminate local innovations as national policies:

The innovation management shows some specific features in this environment:

• sector neutrality, diminishing public/non-public boundaries in innovation
• permanent presence of the "change" brokers who mediate between different sectors and cultures,
• creation of public standards in the concerned development area,
• accreditation of the service providers, publication of accredited suppliers
• linking state funding to the customer,
• establishing an expert and know-how base to provide continuous support for schools,
• the use of modern information technology (including data banks and the Internet) in dissemination,
• coupling training using experimental phases, with voluntary applications for innovation funds

The above mentioned innovations in school management carry serious risks in terms of policy-making and results. The low salaries and the relatively weak position of school managers can make schools under-motivated in the long term. Quasi-markets and experimental programmes will develop groups on individuals, who cannot be handled in terms of innovation and creativity. Regional and settlement-based inequalities distort the work of quasi-markets. Mistakes, sometimes expensive ones, are being made and going to be made in the future. Any kind of control is costly and difficult. Some observers perceive these as signs of 'chaos' and 'disorder' instead of learning. The inclusion of external professional and business companies might stimulate corruption and tensions due to the rewards for businesses and the public sector.

All of the above mentioned challenges can be addressed if policy-makers strengthen the elements of 'learning organisation' in the system. In 'learning organisations' the positive outcomes of the programmes are immediately shared with the broader educational community in the most effective ways (including horizontal learning, innovation banks, the Internet, innovation funds etc.). Probably this strategic area is one of the most underdeveloped one at the moment; the weak disseminating and learning capacity of the educational community might make the system a 'forgetful organisation'. Presumably, the exchange and utilisation of accumulated experiences and values will be the most promising direction of development in the future.