Opposition parties in united push for raising mandatory schooling age

The opposition Socialist, Democratic Coalition, LMP, Momentum, Jobbik and Párbeszéd parties have announced their joint support for a signature drive aimed at raising the mandatory schooling age to 18.

In a joint statement on Friday, the parties accused Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government of deliberately trying to “ruin the future of young people by closing them off from useable knowledge”.

“The lives of some 100,000 young people have already veered off course because since 2011, they’ve been pushed out of education as a result of a soulless and bad decision,” the statement said.

Many of them have not even graduated from primary school, the parties said, arguing that those people had “no chance to acquire any qualifications”.

The parties said the “destruction wrought by [ruling] Fidesz” was causing Hungary to lose ground to Europe in education at an “unprecedented rate”. They also called it “regrettable” that more and more Hungarians were ending their education without graduating from secondary school or acquiring any vocational qualifications while the number of graduates across the European Union is rising.

“We will continue to fight with our partners until Hungary enacts modern education laws that take the future of our children as well as the interests of the individual and the community into consideration,” the parties said.