Hungarian Parliament adopts reform calling into question the status of teachers

The Hungarian Parliament, largely dominated by Viktor Orban's party, adopted on Tuesday (July 4th) a controversial law that modifies the status of teachers. The latter will lose their status as civil servants. The reform that will come into force on January 1, 2024 makes teachers trimmed and corvéable at will.

Teachers in a teachers' room at a school in 2016 in Miskolc, Hungary (Illustration image). © Janos Vajda / AP

Text by: RFI Follow

Advertising

Read more

With our correspondent in Budapest, Florence La Bruyère

Since the abolition of the Ministry of Education, Hungarian teachers were already under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior. With the new law, their status will increasingly resemble that of the military, without job security. Because Hungarian teachers lose their status as civil servants. Their contract will no longer be protected by the Labour Code.

They may be forced to work up to 12 hours a day, 48 hours a week, and may be tossed from one school to another to replace colleagues. In this way, the government hopes to address the teacher shortage. With salaries between 500 and 800 euros per month, the lowest in Europe, teachers can no longer live. There is currently a shortage of 16,000 pedagogues in national education. The new law is likely to make matters worse, as 5,000 people could resign because of this reform.

A reform that teachers call the "law of revenge". Viktor Orban's government is reportedly seeking to quell teachers, after the many strikes and demonstrations that have been taking place for more than a year.

See alsoThe European Court of Human Rights condemns Hungary for "school segregation"

NewsletterReceive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

Share:

Read on on the same topics:

• Hungary
• Education
• Teaching
• Viktor Orban