Opposition party wants significant payrise for teachers

Péter Takács, the interior ministry’s state secretary for health care, signed a strategic agreement with representatives of advocacy groups on Friday.

“We are looking for ways to provide the highest possible financial and moral compensation for health specialists,” the state secretary said. “It’s not enough to have good ideas; those need to be made a reality in cooperation with the stakeholders.” Takács said the advocacy groups were “tough negotiators, but all the more constructive”.

“The agreement will serve as a solid foundation enabling us to fight shoulder to shoulder for modern health care with a human face,” he said. The agreement was signed by Ágnes Cser, head of health-care and social workers’ union MSZEDDSZ, Zoltán Balogh, head of the Hungarian Chamber of Health-care Workers, and Lajos Toma, head of the Independent Trade Union of Ambulance Workers.

Momentum MEP: Education should create opportunities

Good education creates opportunities, and the Momentum Movement is preparing to govern with education in focus, the party’s MEP, Anna Donáth, told a conference in Budapest on Friday. At the conference organised by Momentum, the Tomorrow’s Hungary association and the Renew Hungary party family of the European Parliament, Donáth said such governance required “generous financing” and autonomy for schools and teachers, as well as high-quality, constantly renewed trainings for teachers.

Solving the “gravest crisis in Hungary, that of education” would ease others such as the cost of living crisis, she said. She said the lack of teachers was “dramatic” in Hungary. According to a European Commission survey, the number of weak-performing Hungarian students has grown “to a brutal degree” between 2011 and 2021, she said.

Momentum will aim to raise the funding of public education from 4.5 percent to 7 percent of GDP. Teachers’ wages should be raised to 100 percent of the minimum wage of degree holders, she added. Momentum has turned to the EC with a request to make the payment of EU funds to Hungary conditional on a public education reform. The party also launched a signature drive to support the proposal, she added.

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