4.1. Target setting

Suggestions:

• In the medium term the public education act should include a list of those social partners whose involvement in the dialogue about the basic questions and target setting of content regulation is inevitable; moreover, the organisational and procedural frameworks of a national and local consultation forum should be outlined. In the short run – and only ad interim – the organisation most capable of fulfilling this task is the Public Educational Policy Council, which includes most of the social partners.
• The strategic elements of public education’s content development should be determined according to international trends and debates. Thus, the national and local consultative forums should be connected to the international debates on these topics (visits, study tours, the using communication channels).
• Based on backing institutions and connected to institutions dealing with content development the creation and operation of a national consultation organisation should be prepared.
• The involvement of these social partners should be started during the supervision process of current content regulatory documents, their opinion about NCC 2003 and the exam requirements should be asked. Educational administration should work out its policy connected to the involvement of social partners and it should enable the active participation of these partners in public forums.

Suggestions:

• The definition of strategic targets and requirements of public education should be separated from the development of instruments (curriculum) and contents (programs). State regulation is restricted to a core curriculum defining directing principles, proportions and requirements.
• The personification of content regulation: the responsible workshops capable for long-term development will only be visible with the accreditation of professional content development teams.
• Separated financial resources should support the work of professional content development teams. The financing of curricula and textbook publishing should be separated from this. The private authors who do not belong to professional teams should be gradually integrated to development workshops.
• The framework enabling the horizontal learning of content development workshops should be created on the basis of backing institutions.

4.2 Institutional background

Suggestions:

• The role of the processes maintaining the assessment of requirements, and thus the verification of reaching targets should be increased. The formation of a national assessment system connected to content regulation is necessary.
• The identification of competencies connected to content development and outlining the content and organisational elements of training and postgraduate training connected to it. The training and postgraduate training of experts.
• It is important that the functional reorganisation of backing institutions should be based on the financial resources of currently existing institutions, and with the inclusion of significant financial resources for development. In the course of this, it is important to create an institutional background dealing with the regulatory instruments of regulation, and it is also important to connect curriculum development to assessment.
• The functional reorganisation of instruments and the creation of new frameworks for their operation make it essential to initiate a dialogue with the employees of these institutions. It is necessary to inform both the professional and public opinion about the planned targets and the expected benefits of actions, in order to provide sufficient professional and social legitimating for the new structure. The information policy connected to the above mentioned and the organisation of the professional debate connected to this is of great significance.

Suggestions:

• It would be reasonable to work out regulations, requirements and support for the sake of making the development of content carriers more professional. It would be reasonable to motivate the development of a chamber like internal quality assurance system for textbook publishers.
• In the future it would be desirable for textbook publishers to develop program packets (curricula, textbooks, teaching materials, assessment instruments, development courses, quality assurance) following the instructions of central regulatory instruments, from which public educational institutions would be able to choose.
• Textbook publishers should be made interested in the production of program packets for entire educational periods.
• It is essential to create and improve the horizontal cooperation between textbook publishers, backing institutions and organisations dealing with program development.
• It is important that all forms of connection (communication, interest reconciliation, professional requirements, financing connected to the satisfaction of users) between textbook publishers and content regulators should be part of state politics connected to content regulation.

Suggestions:

• The formation of an Assessment Council based on the Assessment Centre of Public Education (the assessment directorate of the planned Public Education Development Public Company), which regulates the contents of the assessment system relatively independently (selection of samples, verification of assessment tools, etc.) and undertakes the tasks of the central administering board.

4.3. The role of the teachers

Suggestions:

• The outlining, completion acceptance and approval of local pedagogical programs including local curricula, should be regulated on a level of legal regulations.
• The supplies of central content regulation instruments and contents available for creating local curricula should be increased, the procedure connected to the local adaptation of programs should be worked out, and teachers have to be prepared for the application of these.
• The accessibility of modernisation programs preferred by educational policies should be made easier for institutions, or their spreading should possibly be supported by separate professional and financial means.
• By fully supporting teacher training courses, teachers should be prepared for the professional adaptation of programs in order to avoid the compilation of good-willed but low quality local programs resulting incoherence.
• In the course of the completion of institutional programs – without restricting innovative institutions with sufficient capacities – the communicational emphasis should be placed on professional adaptation instead of own compilation.
• Such sources should be made available, that enable the use of experts’ support for interpretation, adaptation and cooperation within the staff.
• In the long run it is essential to support the harmonisation of the periods of institutional quality management (self-evaluation) and the supervision of pedagogical programs.

Suggestions:

• The regulation of learning management on individual or classroom level could be improved.
• It is essential to develop teachers’ competencies connected to the planning of the teaching and learning process and it is also necessary to develop the contents of connecting professional services, especially postgraduate training and consultation.
• It would be useful to look over the content of basic education and to extend this field both regarding theoretical and practical education and it would be important to increase its efficiency.
• The advantages of individual and classroom level process planning should be clarified for teachers in order to raise their efficiency and professional awareness.

Suggestions:

• In the course of planning, managing and realising the teaching and learning process such competencies of teachers should be developed, that enable them to consider the content of content carriers, exam requirements and the effects of extra-curricular learning at the same time; moreover, that enable them to integrate their effects.
• The professional operation of this level of content regulation can initially reached by the development of teachers’ classroom management practices. The aim is not primarily the development of the content development skills of teachers (curriculum and textbook designing), but rather the development of being informed and capable of selecting according to the institution’s needs from a rich market of content carriers.

Suggestions:

• It has become necessary to reorganise the entire system of textbook approval into a textbook group accrediting process – extended to textbooks for several grades.
• The support of the national organisations of textbook and teaching aid developers with, apart from others, organising unified postgraduate courses.
• Instead of supporting individual authors, professional textbook developer teams should be subsidised by the state.
• It would be essential to achieve that the selection of content carriers by institutions should be part of the process of producing and internally accepting the institutional programs instead of following external samples, providing the coherence between targets and content carriers.

4.4 Cooperation of the education sector in the course of content development

Suggestions:

• The accreditation of professional workshops dealing with the content development of public education and vocational education should be carried out, and the workshops following the logic of one sector should be excluded or reorganised into a workshop integrating the intentions of different sectors.
• Instead of the approach of considering one sector the professional development subordinated to LLL should be placed in the foreground. Instead of following the sector’s logic it is essential to define competencies and their identification in public and vocational curricula, the development of which is started in public education, but in the lack of which no efficient vocational education can be operated (key competencies). With the definition of indicators connected to these competencies, they should be integrated into the national assessment system.
• The supervision of legal regulations (governmental and ministerial decrees) connected to the initiation and application of each content regulatory instrument, assuring coherence between regulations.
• The application of financial motivators for the improvement of cooperation between the developers of public and vocational curricula and teaching aids.
• The presentation of connections between public and vocational education, the involvement of the teachers’ elite working in this field, and the formation of their opinion.

4.5 The creation and approval of local pedagogical programs

Suggestions:

• The cooperation between textbook publishers, central and local content developers should be maintained; publishers’ procedure connected to program development should be defined in a way that maintains the whole-scale consideration of central regulatory instruments.
• It is essential to strengthen social control connected to the production and approval of institutions’ pedagogical programs.
• A list of consultants should be created in regional institutions providing professional services, who are competent in supporting the institutional selection of content carriers.
• A document for school managers supporting program adaptation and textbook acquisition based on the institution’s self-evaluation.
• The financial background for the preparation and operation of support institutions should be provided. This service should be available and free for all institutions.
• It is essential to provide further support for institutional quality development programs.
• Regional professional support institution’s role played in textbook selection should be supported; apart from the textbook exhibition rooms, they should provide more services in the evaluation and critical analysis of content carriers.
• In the course of producing pedagogical programs, the selection of content carriers should happen according to the institutional targets neglecting some partial interests. The role of the staff’s decision and the supervising role of school users or parents should be increased in the course of determining content carriers.

Suggestions:

• With the analysis of the planning and decision-making mechanisms of local financing, the instruments that may strengthen the connection between financing, the content of the programs and the efficiency of education should be identified.
• On the one hand it is essential to strengthen maintainers’ obligation to provide 100% of the financial resources required by the program they approved, on the other hand, with the modification of the current practices of financing education, the financing conditions of fulfilling that obligation should be provided.
• At the same time it would be reasonable to decrease the financial plan character of institutional pedagogical programs and their professional and missional character should be strengthened.
• The development of experts’ competencies in the field of giving professional opinion about pedagogical programs, with special regards to the inherent coherence and the cost analysis of the realisation of the programs. Organising accredited postgraduate courses essential for (and obligatory) and enabling the fulfilling of this task.
• The formation of a tender and/or subsidy system connected to the organisation of experts’ postgraduate courses.
• For the sake of the professional support and the essential consultation for municipalities and using the currently existing (institutional and market-orientated entrepreneurial) forms of professional services those field should be identified where municipalities could receive free consultation and also those field should be identified which are available for municipalities according to the rules of the market. Both fields – using different systems- should be provided with financial resources.
• According to the public education act, the maintainer is obliged to maintain the realisation of the approved pedagogical/educational program; therefore, it is significantly important to show the given programs’ cost calculation in the experts’ analysis completed before the approval of the program.

Suggestions:

• It is possible to strengthen the involvement of the institution’s social partners in the creation of the educational/pedagogical programs, or parents’ organisation can be given stronger licences in the process of program approval process.
• The increase of parent organisations’ licences can only be successful if both teachers’ staffs and parent organisations prepare for the fulfilment of this task, and on the other hand, if they are convinced about the advantages of participation. In this aspect, the outlining and accomplishment of a program informing and preparing students can have a significant role. The application of the principle of gradation is of great relevance.

4.6. Supervision, accountability

Suggestions:

• The (legal) connection between institutional self-evaluation and the maintainers’ external evaluation must be created, connecting it to the pedagogical program’s suitability verification and the institution’s quality development.
• The conditions of getting into the National Expert’s Directory should be reviewed and this should be connected to the professional and regional division of the list; moreover, a more “user-friendly” version of the list should be created.
• The financing of the maintainers’ evaluation should be done in a way that enables all municipalities (maintainers) to carry out the supervision and evaluation.
• In the currently operating system, independent evaluating experts or companies can be commissioned, in the medium term the initiation of a company accreditation system can be considered in order to justify the capability of the companies.
• For the sake of connecting maintainer’s (external) evaluation and institutional (external) self-evaluation, it should be clarified that evaluation is not used or is not to be used (!) to discredit certain institutions or to express negative attitudes towards them or to take revenge on them, but without evaluation it is impossible to verify the program’s suitability, the achievement of the institution’s targets, so its is the mutual interest of both partners.

Suggestions:

• In order to make evaluation results have a direct effect on the quality of the institution’s educational activities, it would be essential to connect institutional evaluation to the institution’s financing.
• It would be profitable to work out a process of financing, which would connect the deterioration or improvement of achievement compared to requirements and to its own earlier results with financial consequences.
• For the sake of this, it would be important to transmit a policy, which in the course of evaluating the institutions evaluates according to pedagogical achievements and added values instead of following the principle of equality, and it would support high-level professional achievement with financial motivators.

Suggestions:

• With the creation of national standards it should be made possible to create a common basis for national and maintainers’ evaluation.
• The creation of regulations connected to the local publication of maintainers’ evaluation should be catered for.
• The municipalities’ (maintainers’) competencies connected to professional evaluation and the interpretation of the results should be developed. It is necessary to motivate the joining of the essential resources, either with creating occasional or task orientated associations.
• Within the framework of regional cooperation, the maintainers’ cooperation connected to institutional evaluation should be supported. The resources that enable all maintainers to carry out institutional evaluation regularly and professionally should be made available.
• The pedagogical and professional support institutions should have the essential competencies and capacities for carrying out maintainers’ evaluation.
• Municipalities have to be persuaded that besides the financial and legal supervision, the professional evaluation of institutions has a key role in the successful operation of institutions.
• It would be reasonable to create an agency on the basis of the National Public Education Assessment and Examination Centre for summing up the results of institutional self-evaluation and the maintainers’ external evaluation, which would provide achievement evaluation benchmarking for local partners with publishing annual reports.

4.7. Evaluation, suitability verification, examination

Suggestions:

• It is necessary to increase the role of the output regulatory instruments (unified requirements) in content regulation and it is also important to cater for the ongoing national measurement and assessment of these requirements.
• According to the defined requirements, it is possible to oblige institutions to carry out the suitability assessment of institutional programs within certain periods of time. The suitability assessment of institutional programs and the institutional quality management should be connected, and the legal framework of this must be created.
• Content suitability verification should be integrated into the quality management programs on institutional or municipality level.
• For the assessment of institutional programs’ suitability such assessment instruments and processes must be worked out, that can be directly applied by institutions in the course of self-evaluation.
• It is important to increase the number of teachers experienced in self-evaluation with the help of professional postgraduate courses. The knowledge connected to self-evaluation should have a greater emphasis on school managers’ training.
• Making teachers and institutions interested in participation with the accentuated state sponsorship of training and postgraduate courses intended to develop teachers’ competencies connected to pedagogical evaluation.
• It is important to support the municipal sample projects with tenders and publish the results.
• The strong development of the evaluation competencies of professional regional support institutions, and according to this the expansion of professional competencies. The connection between the national assessment system and the regional pedagogical services should be established.

Suggestions:

• In the medium term, the public education act should determine the social partners, the inclusion of which is basically essential in a social debate for the sake of the assessment of the targets set by content regulations and for the setting of the standards enabling a valid assessment. The organisational framework and the procedures of a consulting forum should be determined.
• The definition of the national assessment is controlled annually by the forum outlining the strategies of content regulation and by the directing board of the assessment system.
• In the long run it seems to be reasonable to found an independent, autonomous and stabilised national assessment centre (agency). It is also reasonable to operate the national consultative forum connected to the centre (agency).

Suggestions:

• Within the frameworks of the national assessment system the suitability verification of content regulatory instruments and their adjustment to the ongoing development of these regulators. The national assessment system should be connected as an instrument to the obligatory NCC assessment prescribed by the public education act.
• It is necessary to develop the assessment system towards the direction of macro level suitability verification.
• The assessment capacity should be significantly increased with providing both the personal and objective conditions. Both basic and postgraduate courses with similar targets should be supported.
• The number of teachers experienced in pedagogical assessment should be increased on the institutional level, and their further training should be subsidised.
• The persuasion of professional and public opinion about the significance of national and local assessments within content regulation and their persuasion about the fact that without these assessments it is impossible to follow up the central and local targets.

Suggestions:

• It is worth to create a connection between content regulatory instruments (curricula, exam requirements) and the unified (standard) assessment requirements even on the level of regulation. It is necessary to provide the biggest possible publicity for the results of the assessment.
• The Public Educational Assessment Centre, under the control of a civil presidential board and the forum setting the strategies for content regulation, should create an annual assessment strategy.
• It is necessary to provide the efficient dissemination of assessment results, including the publication of the results intended to be understandable by the non-professional public, in other words, to all members of the society.
• Apart from or attached to reporting on assessment results, it would be important to create the publicly comprehensible interpretation of the government’s educational intentions and the relevant policies.

Suggestions:

• On the level of regulation as well, it is important to strengthen the connection between the input and output elements of the content regulatory instruments and the requirements of the national assessment system, as these together should form a coherent system. The same kind of coherence should be provided horizontally between local content regulatory instruments and vertically between central and local content regulatory instruments.
• The place and role of state examinations in content regulation, with special regards to the basic examination, should be unambiguously determined – regardless of structural policy considerations.
• The development of exam requirements should be carried out following Hungarian and international practices, making use of the experiences of Hungarian and international assessments; therefore, the Examination Centre should maintain relationships with international organisations and it should participate in international research programs, the results of which can strengthen the Hungarian development of content regulation.
• It is necessary to develop the professional and financial potentials of the National Exam Centre, so that the exam requirements will be in harmony with central curricula, programs and the national standards to be formed; and also will enable the ongoing development in the field of requirements.

Suggestions:

• The function of the basic examination is essential to be determined, re-interpreted and laid down in the public education act and it is also essential to cater for the supervision of the basic examination requirements completed earlier and its connections to its new function.

4.8. The problems connected the functions of content regulation.

Suggestions:

• In the medium term, system regulation is to be synchronised. In order to achieve this aim, it is essential that the public education act should draw back from the detailed regulation of institutions and it should strengthen the legal regulation of system-level strategic processes. It is necessary to work out and discuss the concept of a new type of educational regulation.
• It is necessary to investigate and cease the unreasonably fragmented nature of legal documents connected to system regulation (e.g. NCC and directing principles). It is especially important to create a more transparent and coherent regulation of the content and connection of the input and process regulating instruments set in the public education act.
• The necessity of a unified legal regulation connected to the organisation of state examinations may also be expected. After the legal modification of the system of content regulation, it is urgent to cater for the modification of lower level enacting regulations.
• After the modification of the currently existing act, instead of regulating the application of framework curricula, it seems reasonable to regulate with a legal regulation on the content, design, acceptance, approval, assessment and supervision of local curricula, which includes the tasks and responsibilities connected to the above-mentioned actions.

Suggestions:

• Just as well as it is important to cooperate with social partners in the course of the target setting process of content regulation, it is also reasonable to reach the cooperation of all partners interested in the course of setting the instruments of system regulation.
• In the course of determining the contents of regulatory instruments, it is by all means essential to strengthen cooperation with municipalities (maintainers) as local decision-makers and with institutions as executors. This means that their representatives should be involved in the process of determining the types and main regulatory areas of each instrument and they should not only participate in the discussion of the planned content of prepared regulatory instruments. The idea of shared responsibilities between central and local levels will only operate properly if local decision-makers (who are at the same time the executors of tasks) will have an opportunity to represent their interests connected to certain tasks.

Suggestions:

• Central government very rarely uses system regulatory instruments other than legal regulators. Connecting supplementary normatives present in the financing system to certain content elements more courageously would open new ways of modernisation.
• Providing publicity mentioned before can be regarded as such regulatory instrument, primarily in the content regulatory instruments’ target setting process and in the case of national and local assessment.
• The public education act includes that it is the educational minister’s responsibility to have educational programs (pedagogical systems) worked out and published. Working out and publishing a sufficient number of these kind of programs could significantly support the modernization of educational contents. At the same time, however, it is necessary to provide the opportunity to accredit the programs, which may be developed by institutions, and determination of the accreditation procedure after which these programs could become, already accredited, programs that can be chosen nationwide. In the course of determining the procedure of program accreditation, it is worth mentioning how these programs can be adapted or what other programs – of different subjects or branches of knowledge – can be inserted into them without loosening their inner coherence.
• It would be also important to inform local decision-makers and local offices correctly and to develop their competencies, especially those connected to educational administration. Moreover, it would be important, possibly with the cooperation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, to organise officials’ and decision-makers’ training and postgraduate training system.

Suggestions:

• In the course of determining content regulatory instruments on an institutional level and in the case of the tasks determined by the public education act and in the case of setting indicators of obligatory tasks (compulsory and optional lesson numbers, member numbers of classes and groups, compulsory lesson numbers for teachers etc.), the factor of cost-effectiveness should be much more emphasised contrary to the current situation mainly focusing on – the politically understandable practice of – keeping employers.
• It is important to involve the financially sensitive representatives of social control on each levels of the process.

Suggestions:

• The way mentioned earlier in this report, the indicators and standards that can form the basis of national and local assessment have to be determined and these indicators and standards have to be harmonised with the contents and requirements of content regulatory instruments and with the contents of content carriers (primarily the traditional and digital teaching materials and teaching aids).
• Educational administration has to make a decision on the model of national professional supervision and the system of instruments connected to it has to be built up and operated. The Hungarian task distribution and content regulation system based on shared responsibilities is mainly compatible with the English type (OFSTED) listed expert system, and naturally with its Hungarian adaptation.

Suggestions:

• Looking at the existing and reorganised central backing institutions and organisations, the institution capable of integrating the elements of assessment and innovation, organising benchmarking for the national assessment of achievements and following those results should be named. In the currently existing structure, the National Public Education Assessment and Examination Centre seems to be the most capable institution.
• Within the frameworks of the regulations on data of public interest, it is reasonable to publish the institutional level information on assessment results of students’ achievement and institutions’ external achievement.

Suggestions:

• A medium term strategy should be published about professional services.
• Just as well as content regulation is characterised by shared responsibilities, this same principle should also be used in the course of organising a support network. It would be important to identify the type and content of professional services for each level of content regulation, and after this it would be necessary to clarify the distribution of tasks between professional support institutions, organisations and enterprises and to provide the financial background for these institutions in the long run. Presumably this might create a necessity for re-interpreting the task types and support responsibilities of the currently operating professional services. Determining the specific support expectations connected to each level and the formation of a network of organisations providing these services would prevent services from offering the stop and go implementation process of specific instruments or regulations. Naturally, this does not mean that the implementation process is not of strategic significance – of course it is, and its process has to be planned and completed carefully –, it only means that a well-organised support background should be connected to content regulation.