Socialists condemn wholesale transfer of schools to state

Budapest, November 6 (MTI) – The wholesale transfer of schools from local councils to the state from Jan. 1 is a “grave mistake”, Ágnes Kunhalmi, a senior official of the opposition Socialist Party, said on Sunday.

As of January 1, 2017 a “complete nationalisation” of schools will take place when the entire running of all schools is placed under the management of the state schools agency (Klik), which is nothing but a “debt-generating machine”, the deputy head of parliament’s education committee and head of the party’s Budapest chapter told a press conference.

Klik has managed to take schools to the brink of dysfunction while the performance of students is slowly declining, Kunhalmi said, calling the move “one of the dumbest and most harmful government moves since the transition to democracy in Hungary”.

Kunhalmi said the only reason why a disaster has so far been averted is because local councils were “still holding the hands of their schools”. If the Socialists win the 2018 elections, schools will be returned to the management of local authorities, she vowed.