Heatwave at school start: 35-39 ℃, 95-102 ℉ inside classrooms?

Péter Magyar, who heads the opposition Tisza party, has sent a letter to the government official in charge of public education, asking what was being done to improve “intolerable and inhuman” conditions in Hungary’s schools.

In the letter to Zoltán Maruzsa, seen by MTI on Wednesday, Magyar asked whether the entreaties by teachers and children in connection with hot classrooms had reached the state secretary. In several schools, temperatures in the classroom had reached 39 ℃, the letter said. He also cited the example of a school that had been without running water for months.

Magyar raised concerns about the impact on the health of students and teachers of sustained temperatures of 35-39 ℃.

The autumn heatwave in Hungary will last at least until next week, meteorologists said.

Hungary sees new heat records in September

On the third day of autumn, several heat records were broken, HungaroMet said on its website on Wednesday. On János Hill in Budapest, the mercury dropped to only 22.7 degrees ℃ at dawn on Tuesday, breaking the national and capital’s dawn heat record for that day. In 1956 Pannonhalma, in western Hungary, held the national record until then, with 22.1 ℃ measured.

In Körösszakál, Tuesday saw a new daytime record of 36.5 ℃, when previously on this day 35 ℃ was recorded in 1929 in Szerep and in 1944 in Békéscsaba. At Budapest’s Ujpest weather station, a new daytime record of 35.1 ℃ was measured, beating the 34.5 ℃ level seen in 1949 at the Budateteny station.

Government aiming to take all school children to national or historic memorial sites

The government is expanding its remembrance education programme to take all Hungarian school students to a historic national memorial site at least once, the deputy prime minister said on Wednesday.

The initiative would reach some 78,000-80,000 students in the 7-11th grade, in some 3,000 classes, who will visit one of 47 national memorial sites, Zsolt Semjen said. for the project, he added.

The 1 billion forint (EUR 2.5m) scheme which brings together history lessons, good practices of teaching remembrance at the historic sites and team building in classes will be reviewed after a year. If successful, the government will pursue it further, he added.

Teachers receiving ‘biggest wage increase of all time’ in Hungary?

Teachers’ pay is almost doubling and the scale of the rise is unprecedented in Hungary, a government official said on Wednesday. From Jan 1, teachers’ wages have been raised by 32.2 percent, and a further rise of 21 percent is scheduled from next year, Bence Rétvári, the interior ministry’s parliamentary state secretary, told a press conference, adding that their salaries have risen by 10 percent each year over the past two years.

Over the space of four years, their pay will have risen by more than 93 percent during a single parliamentary cycle. Domestic and EU funding has paid for the wage increase, with about 8 percent of EU funds and the rest used for this purpose until 2030, Retvari said, adding that the EU component got the ball rolling sooner.

The government considers it important to show that teachers are recognised socially, morally, and financially, he said. New career rules adopted by MPs also encourage young people to choose the teaching profession as it will be possible to earn a relatively high salary “even at a young age”, he said.

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