Steven N.Schoolteachers were not offered a meaningful salary increase for next year at Wednesday’s strike talks, but only empty promises from State Secretary for Public Education Zoltán Maruzsa, reports tabloid Blikk.
Following the negotiations, Democratic Union of Teachers (PDSZ) representative Erzsébet Nagy said:
The crisis situation of mass [teacher] resignations and labor shortages must be resolved by the start of the academic year. Many schools are unable to begin the school year in accordance with the law, and the right to quality education guaranteed to everyone in the Fundamental Law is not being upheld.
Nagy stated that all they were able to get out of the government was another meeting for August 30. “We’re not going to have a normal start to the school year,” she warned, asking her colleagues not to wait with their strike preparations.
There will definitely be more work stoppages, said Tamás Totyik, Vice President of the Teachers’ Union (PSZ). There is a crisis in public education, claimed Totyik, for which the government is solely responsible for. [Magyar Narancs]
If the teachers can establish a platform of communication not regulated by the Hun. govt., they just might be able to form a wider opposition of sorts. They will have to go, internet-wise, “abroad” in order to do it.
Getting more Hungarians to explore media is a linguistic challenge, not helped by the school system.