Hungary Adopts Quality Tools For Public Education

摘要

The future position and role of Hungary in the new, continuously enlarging European community will depend to a significant degree on the quality of education in the former Soviet bloc country. Both the Hungarian Parliament and Ministry of Education have therefore made quality improvement in public educational institutions a priority. The quality improvement policy of the education ministry is based on three foundations: 1. Strengthening the financial role of the national government by increasing its percentage of public school funding from 60% to at least 85%. 2. Regulating curriculum content by providing a framework for teachers to follow. 3. Developing a national system of assessment and evaluation. As one possible tool for realizing these aims, the ministry developed and launched a project called the Comenius 2000 Quality Improvement Program for Public Education (see "Who Is Comenius?," p. 107. A pilot project implemented in 2000 had the participation of 464 public educational institutions, including kindergartens, primary, secondary, secondary vocational, technical and art schools, institutions for disabled students and boarding schools. Today, 1,739 schools are involved. Participating schools received a state subsidy to implement the quality management systems.