OECD

Descending resources in Hungarian education

The money spent on one student from elementary school to higher education per year is barely higher than the half of the OECD-average.

According to metropol.hu, the 5564 dollars (5118 Euros, 1,6 million Forints) is not only little compared to the average, but out of the OECD member countries only 8 spends less on their students’ education – writes the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in its report.

The amount of the state’s sources spent on education has been reducing for some time. The study mentions that between 2005 and 2012 the number began to take a smaller part out of the total state expenses. The rate was 7,5% in 2012 which is the second lowest out of the OECD countries. It is also emphasized that during the first governance, between 2008 and 2010 the money spent on education dropped by 11% in real terms, while in the next two years, the Fidesz-government cut it by 13%.

Statists also analysed the data concerning the salary of pedagogues. According to the results, the rate of their salary is much lower than professionals working in different fields of the labour market with a similar qualification. Secondary school teachers are highlighted: pedagogues don’t even earn the 48% of what their coevals earn with similar qualifications. They also added that salaries are rising between 2013 and 2017.

Statistics show that less than 30% of elementary and secondary school teachers are under the age of 40, which makes it important to make this profession attractive for young adults.

The report also writes that higher-level qualified adults earn more than twice as much as adults with secondary degree. At the same time, data shows that the rate of people with diploma is low in Hungary and according to today’s tendency, only 22% of the Hungarians will get a bachelor degree and 0,7% a PhD degree. This makes Hungary part of the last section on OECD’s list.

Although, a diploma doesn’t only mean higher salary, it also makes getting a job easier: in the age group of 24-60 years, there is a 37 percentage point difference in employment rate between adults with a diploma and adults with secondary qualification or less.

Researchers also found that there is a significant difference in Hungary between women’s and men’s salary with the same qualifications. In OECD-countries women generally earn the 73% of what men do, this rate is 64% in Hungary which is the 4th lowest after Israel, Brazil and Chile.

Indication:

According to the results of the 2012 PISA-survey, 97% of headmasters reported that the informatics facilities don’t set back the education. However, students performed worse on digital reading tests than printed ones.

Translated by Alexandra Béni
Source: www.metropol.hu

Copy editor: bm

High qualification well rewarded in Hungary, OECD report finds

Daily News Hungary
Budapest (MTI) – High qualification is well rewarded in Hungary in terms of earnings, with workers holding university degrees earning twice as much as those with a secondary education, the OECD said in its Education at a Glance 2015 report.

The report said the large earnings advantage may in part be due to the relatively small share of people holding higher education degrees in Hungary.

The report said Hungary has one of the largest pay gender gaps among OECD countries. OECD consultant Nóra Révai said that while on average, across OECD member states, women who hold higher education degrees earn 73 percent of what men with university degrees earn, that figure is 64 percent in Hungary, and the fourth lowest among OECD countries.

Révai said, however, at the presentation of the report, that one of Hungary’s strengths is that a very high percentage of students are enrolled in pre-primary education programmes. By the age of four, 93 percent of children were enrolled, the report said.

Révai said the students-to-teacher ratio was satisfactory, adding however, that teachers’ salaries are lower than the OECD average, as is the amount of formal instruction time at the primary level.

She said Hungary’s low share of higher education graduates meant that 22 percent of the young population is expected to obtain a higher education degree over their lifetime versus the OECD average of 36 percent.

She noted that the report found that government spending on education was cut to 83 percent from 2008 to 2012. This was the biggest drop in annual expenditure per student for that period among OECD countries, Révai said.

She said that based on the report’s findings, Hungary should make the teacher profession more attractive to young people, improve the overall quality of the profession and increase enrolment and graduation rates overall. Révai noted, however, that since the report uses data from 2012-2014, the effects of Hungary’s latest education reforms have yet to impact the numbers.

Judit Bertalan Czunyi, Hungary’s state secretary of public education, said Hungary’s goals for education are in line with the recommendations listed in the OECD report. She said that over the last five years, teachers in Hungary received the biggest wage increase since the country’s transition to democracy. The government will continuously raise teacher wages up until 2017, she said.

She said Hungarian schools were now in good hands as the government will not shift responsibility for running schools onto local governments. Students at the primary level receive their textbooks free of charge for free years, she said.

Higher education state secretary László Palkovics said the government had based its education reforms off of the OECD’s reports, adding that reorganising an education system takes a long time, with the results likely to be visible in about ten years’ time. He said the government’s goal was to bring education closer to the needs of the labour market.

OECD deputy director for education and skills Montserrat Gomendio said the organisation is willing to work closely with the government to monitor the progress made in the field of education.

State secretary sees OECD opening to the east

oecd

Paris, November 24 (MTI) – The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is clearly opening to the east, state secretary for security policy and international cooperation István Mikola said on Tuesday.

Mikola told MTI in Paris on the opening day of the Eurasia Week 2015 event that Hungary played a market opening role to help developed countries find their eastern orientation and a presentation about Hungary’s experiences attracted much interest.

He said that he had presented data about the Hungarian economy’s eastern prosperity and pointed out that Hungarian investment to Asia increased by as much as 14 percent in 2014.

Mikola said that Hungary could contribute to OECD’s opening to the east efforts primarily by sharing knowledge.

“Hungary is not only opening to the East but it is already present with serious investments in the large system of eastern markets that the OECD has now started to strongly support,” he said.

OECD raises Hungary forecast for 2016 GDP growth

Budapest, November 9 (MTI) – The OECD raised its projection for Hungary’s GDP growth next year to 2.4 percent in a forecast published on Monday from 2.2 percent in the previous outlook released in June.

The OECD stood by its 3.0 percent projection for Hungary’s growth this year.

It forecast — for the first time — GDP growth of 3.1 percent for 2017.

The economy ministry said in a statement that it welcomed the report, which evaluated Hungary’s economic prospects positively, especially in light of the general deterioration in global growth trends over the recent past. The ministry said that OECD’s forecast falls in line with the positive economic course that the government has outlined for Hungary. The reports of international organisations, credit-rating institutions and market players all testify to the fact that Hungary’s reforms are working, it added.

“Economic growth was strong in 2015 but is projected to slow in 2016 as public investment declines and the fiscal stance becomes less accommodative,” the OECD said.

“Activity should rebound in 2017 on the back of renewed public investment. Private demand should remain fairly robust over the coming two years,” it added.

The OECD sees private consumption growth picking up from 3.0 percent in 2015 to 3.2 percent in both of the following two years.

It sees investments falling by 3.2 percent next year, as the result of lower disbursement of European Union funding at the start of the new funding cycle, before recovering to 0.8 percent growth in 2017.

The OECD said domestic risks for the growth forecast were mainly on the upside, while downside risks were mostly external. With a concentration of automotive companies in its industrial sector, Hungary is vulnerable to fallout from the recent diesel engine rigging scandal; also, a faster-than-expected normalisation of monetary policy in the United States could force the National Bank of Hungary to tighten its own policy rate earlier than expected, it said.

The OECD projects Hungary’s budget deficit will narrow from 2.3 percent of GDP in 2015 to 1.9 percent next year and 1.5 percent in 2017, all well under the 3-percent Maastricht threshold.

Hungary’s public debt-to-GDP ratio is set to fall to 74.6 percent in 2016 and 72.0 percent in 2017.

The OECD noted that monetary policy remains “very accommodative” to the debt trend with the central bank policy rate at a record low.

Zoltan Csefalvay, Hungary’s permanent representative in the OECD, said that the OECD “still has more faith” in Hungary’s economy than the European Commission. Earlier this month, the EC projected an economic growth rate of 2.9 percent for 2015, 2.2 percent for next year, and 2.5 percent for 2017. Csefalvay said the OECD projected more favourable foreign trade figures than the EC, which had also projected a greater decline in infrastructure investments due to the transition between EU funding periods.

Csefalvay said that another reason why the OECD’s raised projections for Hungary were welcome was because despite global expansionary monetary policies and fiscal consolidation, the organisation once again cut its global growth forecast for 2015 to 2.9 percent.

The OECD commissioner noted that the OECD could not yet predict the impact of Europe’s refugee crisis on labour markets as “there are still too many unknowns”, such as the duration of the asylum procedure, the skills and qualifications of refugees and whether or not they are successfully integrated into society.

Hungary is among the ten most workaholic countries – OECD list

South Korea led the list for a long time, but for some years, Mexico is in the lead, people spend here the most time with work, according to OECD. Hungary is among the ten most workaholic countries.

In 2013, an employee worked 1880 hours. Browsing the list, it clearly shows that the time spent working is not enough for success on its own. The OECD average, for example, is 1770 hours, but an employee worked 1400 hours in the Scandinavian countries and in Germany in one year, index.hu said.

based on the article of index.hu
translated by BA

Data: oecd.org

OECD joins consensus on Hungary’s “outstanding” economy, says ministry 

Daily News Hungary economy

Budapest, June 3 (MTI) – The OECD has joined international organisations that acknowledge Hungary’s economic achievements and positive growth outlook, the economy ministry said on Wednesday.

Commenting an OECD forecast, the ministry said the government, the IMF, the OECD, large international institutions and market analysts share the view that Hungary’s economy is “performing outstandingly”.

The OECD has upgraded its forecast of Hungary’s main indicators to a greater extent than those of other Visegrad Group countries, it said.

Whereas global economic growth has slowed from last November, it is noteworthy that Hungary’s economy is on a stable growth path and stands out in European comparison, the ministry added.

The OECD upgraded its forecasts for Hungarian economic growth for this year to 3 percent from 2.1 percent, and to 2.2 percent from 1.7 percent for 2016

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said in its Economic Outlook released on Wednesday that exports were expected to grow by 5.7 percent both this year and in 2016 and the current account surplus of 4.8 percent this year was likely to rise to 5.1 percent.

Economy Minister Mihaly Varga welcomed the report, saying it was “substantially optimistic” about changes in Hungary’s economic structure, employment and domestic consumption, which would all raise growth.

Analysts polled by MTI said international players had welcomed the planned reduction in the banking tax, which the OECD report also featured.

David Nemeth, senior analyst at K+H Bank, said the fall in domestic consumption was due to lower expected government activity attributed partly to fewer European Union funds arriving to the country next year. Vivien Barczel, analyst at Erste Bank, agreed with the OECD report on inflation jumping to 2.7 percent in 2016.

Nemeth said inflation could grow to above 2 percent already this year, partly due to a rise in global crude oil prices and the effects of the government’s utility bill schemes fading off. Still domestic consumption will remain relatively high, at 2.4 percent this year and 2 percent next year with net real wages rising, he said. Meanwhile inflation is expected to rise also in the euro zone, which, through imported goods, will accelerate Hungary’s consumer price growth, too, he said.

The ruling Fidesz described the OECD forecast as another acknowledgement of Hungary’s achievements. Hungarians have every reason to be optimistic because there will be more jobs and next year’s budget guarantees lower taxes and a further increase in wages, the party group said in a statement.