It is outrageous that those who want to bring teachers out to the streets regularly refused the opportunity for dialogue and the government’s invitation to the public education roundtable, the most productive forum for the discussion about teachers and children, it added.

The government is on the side of children and teachers, and has continuously replaced, since 2010, monies taken from public education by the left, the secretariat said. The debate over the upkeep of schools has been successfully resolved thanks to the public education roundtable: the state has taken responsibility for maintaining and developing schools, the secretariat said.

The system of local councils maintaining schools has failed, nearly bankrupting local governments, thus it cannot be reintroduced, it added.

József Tóbiás, the leader of the opposition Socialists, said his party supported the teachers protesting on Saturday because they believe governing Fidesz cannot be believed at the negotiating table. Demands in Hungary “can only and exclusively be expressed in the street and in the square”, he added.

The protest is the result of the government “playing games” with teachers and unions as well as with students and parents over the past year, Tóbiás said. At the end of this academic year, no positive change is evident in the area of education, rather the situation is worse as local governments have been deprived of any chance to support their institutions of education, he added.

The group of MPs of governing Fidesz said in a statement in response that Hungary’s former leftist government had always taken money from education, brought local councils that maintained schools to the brink of bankruptcy and shut down hundreds of schools, putting several thousand teachers on the streets.

Fidesz has raised teachers’ salaries by 50% on average, the biggest pay rise in the education sector since the democratic transition, the Fidesz group said. Wage rises will continue in the sector this year and in next autumn, and they will be applied to people who work in education but are not teachers, too, they added. All other professional questions affecting teachers will be duly resolved at the public education roundtable, the MPs said.

Republished with permission of Hungary Matters, MTI’s daily newsletter.