According to the already adopted budget for next year, in 2020 the government will spend HUF 645 billion more on education than in 2010, Gergely Gulyás, the Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office stated on Saturday in Pécs at the joint school year opening ceremony of Reformed Church educational institutions in the Carpathian Basin.
At the event held at the Pécs Reformed Church College, Mr Gulyás stressed that the most extensive school development programme of the past thirty years is currently under way in Hungary, for the purposes of which the government will provide EU grants worth more than HUF 110 billion and state grants worth a further HUF 46 billion.
He said 158 developments are being implemented from local funds, including the refurbishment of gymnasiums and classrooms, the building of new schools and school wings, and from this year everyone from first grade to ninth grade will receive textbooks free of charge. Students attending church and state schools are equally beneficiaries of these projects, he added.
He said today church schools account for fourteen per cent of schools in public education. This percentage is hardly satisfactory, but it is now double what it was nine years ago.
The Minister said right from the beginning church education, and in particular Reformed Church education, was open to everyone: to the children of manual labourers, the needy and the well-off, but equally to believers and those seeking faith. It is the same today as the Reformed Church “has undertaken to serve the people, all the way from nursery school to university, from small villages to well-off Rózsadomb, from Károli University to Roma specialisation schools, from the motherland through the Carpathian Basin to scattered communities around the world.”
He recalled that churches, including the Reformed Church, have given Hungarian history a great many excellent people who, with their knowledge and talent, created something durable, from János Arany through Ferenc Kölcsey and Frigyes Schulek to the Nobel Prize winner Albert Szentgyörgyi.
Mr Gulyás underlined that today the Hungarian government recognises, respects and finds indispensable the role played by churches in society, and this role equally extends from religious activities to the operation of institutions. They provide education which “in addition to resting on the foundations of Christian values, offers access to faith and the reinforcement of faith”.
He stressed that the state has no business with anyone’s religious convictions; however, the state and the government must have a clear vision of society which “must, according to our choice of values, rest on the preservation of a Hungarian future and national awareness, survival and advancement”.
The government is convinced that these goals cannot be attained without the contributions of historical churches, he stated.
He underlined that today’s Europe must recognise that “by resigning Christian culture and faith, it could lose everything that has characterised the continent for generations and for centuries”.
He added that today this may well be a minority view which “poses a threat to the dominant opinion dictatorship of political correctness which has paralysed public life in Western Europe,” but paradoxically “those are accused of taking anti-democratic measures contrary to the rule of law who seek to demolish every type of dictatorship, including the dictatorship of views because they believe in freedom and Christianity all at once”.
Quoting Robert Schumann, a “founding father” of the European Union, he said “Democracy owes its existence to Christianity. […] An unchristian democracy is a caricature which sinks into tyranny or anarchy.”
József Bódis, Minister of State for Education of the Ministry of Human Capacities said, in addition to passing on basic skills and information, it is the duty of schools to foster the potential and abilities of the individual, and this is how “the future can be built through young people”.
Péter Hoppál (Fidesz-KDNP), Member of Parliament for Pécs, President of the Board of the Pécs Reformed Church College highlighted that while due to decisions adopted in Trianon the territories of Baranya situated on this side of the border today and beyond have parted, the unified Baranya diocese established the legal predecessor of the current school during the years of the war, as a response to the war. He added that the institution re-established after the fall of communism has since served as a home to students from both Baranya counties, including Hungarian students from settlements forming part of Croatia today.
After the school year opening ceremony, the new school building of the institution was inaugurated in the presence of church leaders. The three-storey facility implemented from an allocation of more than HUF 1.3 billion as part of the Human Resources Development Operational Programme accommodates 14 classrooms, a science laboratory, a gymnasium and a community space. Two classes of students from each of the eight elementary grades will study in the building with a ground space of some 3,200 square metres.
Almost 1,100 students are educated at the Pécs Reformed Church School Centre with a history dating back to the 16th century which celebrated its 100-year jubilee in 2016. After a period of forced closure during communist dictatorship, the institution was re-opened in 1992.