Introduction

During the last two decades the system of content regulation in Hungary has undergone profound reforms that affected all elements of the system. Even at the very beginning, first alterations of content were deeply rooted in the concept of a multi-level content regulation system.

In other countries of Central East Europe, the democratisation and modernization of the contents of public education have been carried out by freeing one part of the traditional curriculum, by the modification of former curricula and by the publication of new textbook series. During the second half of the 90s, the ideas connected to the formation of a multi-level content regulation system emerged, but the completeness and radicalism of the Hungarian experiment is unique in the region. The profound changes did not only indicate the first steps of a learning process within the Hungarian education system. The changes brought about by the National Core Curriculum (NCC) were accompanied by several conflicts and debates. The initiation of the framework curriculum gave an answer, which was questioned by many people, to uncertainty and “chaos” with the intention of consolidation.

The Ministry of Education’s medium term public education development strategy outlined those development targets, which – besides others – should be served by the system of content regulation. The central elements of this target system are the development of competencies supporting lifelong learning, the integrated education of different student groups and the emphasis on information and communication technologies (ICT) in education. The strategy defined those preferable learning results (key competencies), the development of which it intend to support; these key competencies are the following:

• Learning techniques: reflected and routinised practice of learning, the realization of different learning needs demanded by different situations;
• Intelligent learning: the understanding of inherent connections of the material, the ability of solving problems, recognizing connections between different learning areas.
• Applicable knowledge: connecting knowledge to personal experiences and real-life situations, the ability of understanding changes, the connection of different elements of knowledge, the ability of making decisions, planning, behaviour and self-control, the application of gained knowledge in different situations;
• Instrumental competencies: the flexible and routinised application of language, communication, mathematics, IT and media user competencies;
• Social competencies: the ability of recognizing social hierarchies and issues, social responsibility, the ability of solving conflicts, cooperativeness, reflecting on social experiences;
• Value orientation: the norm-orientated samples of taking actions, social, democratic and individual values, autonomous action, reliability, tolerance, a socially accepted behaviour, cultural involvement.

In order to reach the targets outlined in the course of identifying key competencies strategic decisions, affecting the system of content regulation, were made. These include for example the regulation of public education as a unified process. Without doubt, for realizing these targets significant changes of the system of content regulation are essential. Educational governance has been and is carrying out significant alterations, which apply to the content and method of curriculum regulation, the examination and assessment system and the systems connected. Therefore, the modifications of the Public Education Act have reformed the legal basis of content regulation in many aspects.

The changes in regulation and financing initiated by the Ministry of Education, moreover, the target programs highlighted by the ministry’s medium term development strategy together with the National Development Plan create such an essential and complicated group, that makes the unified analysis of certain regulatory subsystems’ changes and their effects inevitable. Subsequently, the Ministry of Education commissioned the National Institute for Public Education, Centre for Educational Policy (OPEK) to make an analysis about public education’s content regulation and to make recommendations for the sake of further development.

Today content regulation and modernization seem to be a sphere of politics less important than it used to be. However, the debates connected to new initiatives (NCC 2003) go on, the heat of these debates cannot be compared to the debates of the previous periods. There are good reasons to assume that as a result of the so-called “tiredness from reforms” it is more difficult to involve institutions than it used to be. At the same time the debate on the instruments of content regulation include problems (e.g. school structure) the solution of which reaches beyond the opportunities of the system analysed here. This shows that professional and political public opinion is overwhelmed with illusions about the effects of traditional content regulatory instruments, while – as we will see – the opportunities of employing indirect instruments are being underestimated.

In this situation there is a greater need of understanding the problems connected to content regulation than ever. The most important moral of the debates on the three reforms’ (NCC 1995 – framework curricula – NCC 2003) can be – and this was our most important target – the recognition that it is essential to work out a more abstract content regulation model than the specific reform plans connected to governments and ministries. The existence of such a model could help in discussing the ever-existing regulatory concepts. On the other hand, our target is to describe a content regulation system applicable in a modern and democratic society in order to help ceasing illusions connected to rationally directed content changes and their implementation into classrooms. Moreover, we intend to expose such levels and functions of content regulation, which can have a much stronger effect on the educational (today teaching and learning) processes or on the knowledge of students’ in public educational institutions than the effect of traditional instruments.

The genre of the report created by CEPA (“public political analysis”) shows that its aim is to support educational policy-making. According to our intentions, a “user friendly” document was created that will serve public debates on the issue, the planning, making and implementing decisions of educational policy. The report is divided into five main parts. In the first part we draft the levels and functions of content regulation within the framework of the new interpretation of content regulation, then, we investigate the role of the connected systems. In the second part we go through the most important changes of content regulation during the last two decades. In the third part, following the logic of the previously drafted model, we look at the most important characteristics of the situation preceding and the changes following the governmental changes in 2002. In the fourth part we will identify the most important problems, the solution of which is inevitable in order to improve the system of content regulation, and we formulate those recommendations, which, according to our opinion, enable the creation of a coherent content regulation system. Finally, in the fifth part we investigate and look at the possible effects of our recommendations, their practicability, maintainability, moreover, we will also outline their cost effect.