Creators of the Law of Education being these days in front of the Parliament want all the schools in Hungary to be alike.
But there are lots of parents, children and pedagogue who are in the know, that

THERE IS AN-OTHER SCHOOL.

In these ANOTHER schools Kathy’s, Peters, Hannas, Daniels are learning instead of „pupils, students”.

In these ANOTHER schools we educate kids,
- who are allowed to have own ideas
- to whom authority - instead of status - means knowledge and humanity
- who feels solidarity towards persons in need
- who are able and like to read
- who are digitally literate
- who know languages
- who become thinking Hungarian and European citizens
- who respect traditions
- who can’t be „brainwashed”, because they are in the know of history, of the nature of power and business.

In these ANOTHER schools
- pedagogues pay common attention to values with the parents
- learning is a source of joy
- the individual is important as part of the community
- the preserving of motivation of learning happens by developing learning abilities

Teachers of these ANOTHER schools
- working not alone, but as part of a professional community who is able to develop a substantive program
- know that the kid is 6, 10, 16 years old only once,
- work in developing workshops, where all the problems are common
- know that creativity, literature, music and dancing is important for EVERYONE
- know that the development of the kids is the responsibility of the families, and NOT of the government
- want to raise happy children to happy grownups instead of producing useful customers for the market, useful voters for the parties
- know that „average pupil” doesn’t exist
- know that the nasty kid is maybe hungry, maybe her/his father was drunk last night
- believe that students become not just labor, but also a friend, a spouse, a parent, and an individually and human thinking self-conscious citizen.

Communiqué of the AME

To the Prime Minister

We are astonished to have learnt of the possible termination of state subsidies in the area of foundation-maintained education from the mass media. The information was publicized after the subject had been brought up in the Ministry of National Finances (NGM) in connection with the impending new law of public education. The Association of Hungarian Independent Schools deems the idea itself absurd, ill-advised and irrational, and demands the immediate repeal thereof.

The proposal fails to consider the social benefits provided by the foundation sphere in the field of disadvantage-compensation, vocational development and provision of special tasks – this in itself is absurd. It is also well known that this field is the „cheapest” area of education for the state: these institutions, in average and in total, get half of the budgetary subsidy than clerical or local governmental schools.

Neither the state and the local governments, nor the church is in possession of the capacity and professional programs necessary to place or fulfil the needs of the more than 300 thousand children concerned in the area – from the poorest and those with special educational needs to the students of vocational and basic art training and those attending the few elite schools. We also call attention to the fact that 2/3 of the participants of this field accomplish their tasks without any financial support from the parents, and the institutions that do require payment are not taking from but contributing to the area of public education. The taxes paid by the cca. 16 thousand educators and 2-3 thousand technical and financial workers approximate the whole sum of state subsidy required for the maintenance of the field.

We are at a loss to have seen the proposal put forward by Minister Matolcsy to appear in the media on the same day the Minister announced the necessary enlarging of employment – just like he did many times before. We deem it unthinkable that the government would want to put 20 thousand people, so to speak, on the street. We wonder what the NGM would do with those nearly 20 thousand, mostly graduate employees.

The standpoint of NGM being narrow-minded and unacceptable is further highlighted by the fact that besides the foundation schools it also neglects to take the small clerical maintained schools and the institutions of the training school network into consideration, these concerning additional several thousand employees and 10 thousands of students.

We emphasize that this communiqué does not go into the social benefits of the field of foundation in education, but solely states the proposal to be irrational, unacceptable and outrageous.

However, it gives us some reason for optimism that the standpoint of Ministry of National Resources (NEMFI) differs from that of the NGM on a basic level, so at the moment we may hope the government to accept the viewpoint of the educational administration. This however does not mean that the AME agrees with the ambition that nationalizes the conception of public educational law. Last December the AME had expressed a detailed opinion on the original conception of the law; the current draft is only known by us from the media and also being commented on by the Association towards the government and the NEMFI.

On the grounds of the huge deviances that have occurred from the first version of the conception, we hereby request the Prime Minister to renew the harmonizing discussions with the professional organizations of education, support our standpoint and prevent the government from accepting the proposals of NGM.

György Horn president
Association of Hungarian Foundation and Independent Schools (AME) Bp. 15. April 2011.