The contents of this website are no longer being updated. You can access all the latest Hungarian news in English formerly featured on the Hungary Matters website and daily newsletters at our refurbished mti.hu portal.

The must-have newsletter about Hungary

MI HAZÁNK ADVOCATES SCHOOL SEGREGATION

 

The radical nationalist Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) party says Hungary’s education system is in need of segregation. Dóra Dúró, the party’s deputy leader, said that boarding schools or “special” and “parallel” classes should be created for students “who are incapable of adhering to community norms”.
Mi Hazánk proposes that students who have trouble following social norms should be placed in boarding schools where they can be taught responsibility, work ethic and the need to study. Under the party’s plan, a committee of social, child protection and education experts would decide whether a child in question should be placed in such an institution, Dúró said. She said the system currently in place penalised families who for safety reasons are often forced to transfer their children to schools located far from their homes. Citing figures from the Central Statistical Office (KSH), Dúró said the share of disadvantaged students exceeds 40% in five of Hungary’s 19 counties. She said that although Mi Hazánk’s segregation model was not based on ethnicity, it was “undeniable” that conflicts in Hungary’s school system often stemmed from “Hungarian-Gypsy coexistence”.
Dúró said the number of conflicts would only rise, arguing that “the Hungarian population declines by half with every generation, while the Gypsy population doubles, also with every generation”. The government has spent 160 billion forints (EUR 506m) on various special “catch-up” education programmes for Roma children over a period of five years, but they have not yielded any results, Dúró insisted. She said such a model was no longer sustainable, arguing that Hungarian politics “should get behind decent families.