The Sunday fights

As in other European countries and even at EU level, Christian churches are lobbying also in Hungary for a ban on working on Sundays. With a twist.
While banning Sunday work was put on the agenda by the Christian democrats (KDNP), the far right party Jobbik has picked up the issue and introduced yesterday a proposal to ban employers from requiring their employees to work on Sundays. With loopholes, of course.

Anomymous experts

The highest official for education, secretary of state Rózsa Hoffmann (who became famous for starting her job with cancelling the newly intorduced prescription that kindergarden should not reinforce stereotypes, including gender stereotypes), intends to make a new law on education and higher education. To this aim, she organised a secret experts meeting in August, and the group of experts has already prepared a blueprint for the main issues - a 43-pager for primary and secondary education, while the tertiary sector got 9 pages. FigyelőNet got a copy of it.
While there are positive suggestions such as improving teacher training, increasing the time children have to psent at school, and having more sports lessons, there are some disputable ideas, such as the one saying preference should be given to other languages than English - instead of English, not along with it (let's be realistic: nowadays, if you have a BA, you won't get a job with at least some English).
While according to the blueprints, the direct state subventions for schools maintained by the local governments are to be increased to 90% of the total cost, these subsidies will amount to 100% in the case of faith schools.
The members of the experts' group are held secret (accodring to the ministry, the membes do not receive any money, and some of them don't want to have their names disclosed) by the ministry, but according to FigyelőNet 'compared to the fact that faiths schools tot up to about seven percent of the sector, faiths schools are -- to put it mildy - overrepresented in the shaping of the strategy dealing with the hole system.' The somwhat piqant part is that though the minister is a member of both Fidesz and KDNP, Fidesz's experts are not involved in the preparation. Or in other words: a party that would get around 1% of the votes if they had to run independently of Fidesz is shaping edcuation accodring to their private agenda.
http://www.fn.hu/belfold/20100906/nemzeti_egyuttmukodes_fidesz_nelkul/

The expert

Mrs Rózsa Hoffmann, state secretary (i.e. the highest official specialising in education--her boss, the minister is a specialist in medicine and also responsible for health, sports, social, education and culture issues) for education with a strong catholic background, has already several times emphasised that she intends to improve the situation of faith schools (as well as introduce religious education).
Schools maintained by the local governments receive most of their funds directly from the state budget, but as this is not enough, the local governments have to top these up. For faith schools (and other social services such as homes for the elderly) the situation is a bit different: they not only receive the same state subsidies local government schools, but also the amount the local governments have spent on their schools (in exchange, they have to teach according to hte national curriculum). Of course it's difficult to figure out exactly how much money has been spent by the local governments on their schools, so there is ample room for disagreement and church complaints. This system is enshrined in the Vatican treaty (Concordat) but applied to all faith schools (but not to private schools maintained by others than churches).
Hoffmann now wants to improve the financial situation of faith schools by increasing the ratio of funds provided by the state, saying this should amount to 90% of the costs, and the difference--to be paid by the local governments in the case of local schools--will be taken over by the state in the case of faith schools. From her statement it seems, that though having become a state secretary a few months ago and having been the head of the Pedagogy Department at Pázmány Peter Catholic University (after decades at the ministry of education and as a headmistress of a secondary school), she is not quite familiar with how schools are being financed in the last 12 years. Therefore, contrary to her intentions and somewhat ironically, if this plan is carried out, local governments's secular school will fare better financially compared to the present situation :-).

How to hand over state schools to churches easily

The Hungarian Teachers' Union wrote a letter to the constitutional court protesting against a new bill (No. LI of 2010) modifíng the law on public education. According to the bill, local authorities may hand over their schools to a church institution on the spot, without delay. According to the union, this step violates teachers' and pupils' religious freedom, as this would mean that anyone may suddenly find themselves in a religious institution, and in some places, there may not be any secular alternative.
Though schools are mainly state financed, they are maintained by the local government, and as the state subsidies are not enough, the schools budget is usually supplemented from the (also rather tight) local budget. Church schools, on the contrary, receive an avarage of the supplements provided by the local government in addition to the regular state subsidies. Therefore handing over a local school to a church is financially rewarding for local goverments,

New government, new census

After having waited impatiently for four years, in April, the liberal-turned conservative Fidesz have won the elections, carrying on their back the clerical Christian National Democrats (KDNP), who on their own don't even make the 1% limit for getting state funding, not to speak of managing to tackle the 5% threshold for getting into parliament. While the new government has still not yet taken over (as they want to govern with a totally new structure, meaning very few ministers [so a medical researcher is designated to govern health, education, culture, welfare and sports issues] and a huge amount of state secretaries, they first have to amend the constitution), the parliament is already up and working: three MPs (two of them Christian Democrats, of whom one especially famous for bashing singles and designated deupty prime minister) have initiated a change to the census law in order to add (among others) a question on religious affiliation. According to their initiative, answering would not be compulsory--as in 2001, when over 10% of the population declined to answer, and the rest of the data was quite meaningless, as most people just answered based on their family tradition.
Conclusion: another way to throw out a lot of money when we are short of it...

http://nol.hu/belfold/termekenysegunkre_is_kivancsi_a_fidesz