A magyar közoktatás-politika a népességcsökkenés és finanszírozási zavarok idõszakában
The Hungarian Public Education Policy in a Period of Population Decline and Financial Difficulty

Summary/Abstract: In Hungary, the drastic population decrease and the 50% salary increase of public employees with transferring its severe burden on to school maintainers generated functional problems in the public education system and revealed the weakness of the government mechanism. As a lasting heritage of the socialist-type Polish workers union movement, today in the public service employees play a significant role in the management of their workplace. Accordingly, school teacher are now in a powerful position to determine the objectives of the public service such as the school’s professional curriculum and the mechanism of their self-control with open voting. Also their words weighs heavily when their own employer, the school principal, is elected. After 1990, the same pattern of self-governance model appeared at the local administration level when 3,200 independent selfgovernments came to exist side by side. These developments produced a political triangular consisting of (1) an educational ministry which regard itself professional but is dominated heavily by the pedagogical elite, (2) self-governments enjoying broad range of autonomy and strong legitimacy gained through local elections, and (3) professionally independent and atomized schools. The population decrease and the lack of financial sources force school-maintainers to merge or to completely close schools, depending on the size of the municipality. The study explores these developments.

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