Teacher shortage in Hungary much worse than anybody expected

Hungary’s public education sector had a shortage of more than 20,000 teachers in the 2020-2021 school year, the head of teachers’ union PSZ said on Monday, citing a study carried out by the organisation.

Counting all school staff directly assisting teachers, the labour shortage in the sector exceeded 34,000, Tamás Totyik told a press conference, adding that the study was based on data obtained from local reports of national competence tests, the Central Statistical Office and social security information. Altogether, the public education sector is missing 34,618 workers, Totyik said, adding that this was a “conservative estimate”. According to the study, the sector had a shortage of 20,587 teachers in the 2020-2021 school year.

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EU institution leaders ‘in thrall to multinationals’?

Ursula von der Leyen’s recent “state of the union” speech is evidence of how the leaders of European Union institutions are in thrall to multinationals, German and French carmakers in particular, opposition LMP has said, commenting on the speech given by the President of the European Commission.

The green party’s spokesman, József Gál, told a press conference on Monday that LMP did not support Von der Leyen as EC president and would continue to withhold its backing after the European Parliament elections. Von der Leyen has said the EC will investigate the flood of cheap Chinese electric cars on the European market, he noted, adding that the competition procedure was set up to protect the German and French car industry, while these companies repatriated handsome profits thanks to exploiting cheap labour and natural resources in central and eastern Europe.

European institutions, he said, were encouraging eastern parts of the EU to be places of landfill and assembly plants of EU core countries. Gál said EU leaders should be on the side of ordinary people, not large corporations, and the EU leadership “is more than happy” to help Prime Minister Viktor Orban make Hungary into a “battery colony”. Pollution from electric car manufacture would concentrate in the east, while all the profits would stay in the west, he added.