Central opening ceremony of the school year held in Kecskemét

The 2020-21 academic year will be “a year of schools, gyms, swimming pools and major renovation projects”, Miklós Kásler, the human resources minister, said at the central ceremony opening the school year, held this time in Kecskemét, in southeastern Hungary, on Sunday.

Kásler said that school development projects worth a combined 100 billion forints (EUR 280m) were under way, financed from European Union funds and with a 10 billion forint contribution by the Hungarian government.

Kásler said that

families were “a national asset”, and added that 106,000 poor schoolchildren were given free equipment this year, purchased from a government allocation of 765 million forints.

He added that the government had spent 4.6 billion forints on revamp projects during the summer in preparation for the school year and to help prevention efforts against the coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier in the day, Kásler told public Kossuth Radio that schools would open in the traditional way but warned that coronavirus-related restrictions must be taken “very seriously”. He said that children must keep a distance one from another, wear face masks and frequently wash their hands.