Public school teachers go on full-day strike – PHOTOS – Update

Budapest, April 20 (MTI) – Public school teachers on Wednesday morning began a full-day strike after the teachers’ strike committee failed to reach an agreement with the government earlier this week on teachers’ demands.

Although the strike committee and government representatives recently moved closer to an agreement on most of the teachers’ 25 demands, the sides have so far failed to reach a deal on the reduction of the number of teachers’ compulsory classroom hours and administrative burdens, wage increases, a free choice of textbooks or the reduction of the burden on students.

In line with the strike law, schools must ensure the appropriate supervision of students and teachers not participating in the strike are to report for work as normal.

The government-initiated public education roundtable met several times over the past few months to discuss ways to improve the running of public schools but the teachers’ strike committee, made up of teacher union PSZ, the Union of Education Leaders and the Union of Hungarian Public Education and Training, has stayed away from those talks.

Wednesday’s day-long strike is the third in a series of larger protest actions from teachers in recent weeks against the state of Hungary’s public education system.

As we wrote, last Friday, the PDSZ teacher union held a two-hour nationwide warning strike at public schools. PDSZ chairman László Mendrey said several hundred schools and thousands of teachers took part in the action.

On March 30, the Tanítanék (I want to teach) teacher movement organised a one-hour civil disobedience protest which saw teachers and the movement’s supporters gather in front of their respective schools to express their dissatisfaction with the education system.

As we wrote, Monday’s meeting of the public education roundtable resulted in an agreement between the government and the meeting’s participants on two one-time 35,000 forint (EUR 113) bonuses for teaching assistants later this year and a 10 percent pay rise in 2017. The wage hike would be made up of a guaranteed 7 percent increase while schools would have the option to grant the remaining 3 percent.

Human resources ministry state secretary Bence Rétvári told commercial television TV2 on Wednesday that teachers’ wages will increase by 3.5 percent both this coming September and next year in line with the teacher career model. Next year’s budget allocates an extra 100 billion forints towards education, he noted.