Shocking teacher shortage in Hungary: Maths is taught by arts teachers

Although the Klebelsberg Institution Maintenance Centre (KLIK) claims that only natural fluctuation exists in the Hungarian education system, according to a survey, the lack of teachers causes serious problems for the students in some places.

A country-wide problem

In fact, the survey was done by Szülői Hang, an association that can be translated into English as “Parents’ Voice”. They did so because the government did not provide any official statistics regarding the issue. Even though their survey is not representative, 5,281 parents filled out their questionnaire – 24.hu reported.

Based on their findings,

45 pc of the parents experienced teacher shortage

which means that their children did not have classes of a particular subject for at least two weeks. To make matters worse, 31 pc of them reported about 1 month while 15 pc talked about 3 months of such time intervals. The lack of qualified teachers mostly concerns vocational high schools (65 pc). Nine out of ten parents think that

the state does not appreciate the work of teachers

and it does not provide the needed financial and moral support for them. Besides, they think that the environment is not suitable for teaching.

Teacher shortage mostly concerns the teaching of Maths (11.1 pc) and English (9 pc) which is very sad taking into consideration that from 2020 on only those can go to universities who obtain at least an intermediate level language exam. In fact, Maths and English teachers are mostly missing in small settlements. Neither are there enough Physics teachers, as well.

“Hungarian is taught by the PE teacher while Music by a primary school teacher.” – said a parent from Pest County. “One of the teachers