Hungary Braces for Teacher Exodus After ‘Vengeance’ Law Approved

Zoltan Simon
Tue, July 4, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Hungary braced for a wave of teacher resignations after Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s legislators approved a new law that educators see as a crackdown following years of anti-government protests.

The parliament in Budapest, where members of Orban’s party hold a two-thirds majority, approved the so-called status law — stripping teachers of protections granted to public employees, raising the number of weekly hours of required teaching and limiting educators’ autonomy. It also allows the government to relocate teachers.

Dubbed the “vengeance law” by its critics, the legislation steps up pressure on teachers and threatens to push staffing in the education sector to critical levels. More than 5,000 teachers have pledged to quit if the new regulations come into effect, according to a tally on website aHang.

“The law is all about trying to paper over the shortage of teachers,” said Bence Toth, a biology and chemistry teacher at a primary school in Budapest who joined a protest in a steady drizzle outside the parliament building in Budapest. “It’s also about retribution for our strikes.”

Orban has moved to rein in schools as part of his more than decade-old power consolidation, which has seen him extend his sway over the media, courts, culture, education and large swaths of the economy.

The government has touted the status law as ensuring a steady increase in teacher wages, even as it has linked much of it to the receipt of European Union funds, which are mostly blocked due to corruption and rule-of-law concerns. The cabinet would only relocate teachers in “extraordinary cases,” Cabinet Minister Gergely Gulyas told reporters on June 22.

Hungarian primary education teachers with 15 years of experience earn the second-lowest wage among the 38 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to 2021 data, the latest available. Only Slovak teachers fare worse.

That’s prompted teachers to hold demonstrations, some of which coincided with a general election campaign last year that was initially seen as a major test of Orban’s rule. After another landslide victory, one of Orban’s first moves was to transfer oversight of education to the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for law enforcement.

The government has since limited the right of teachers to strike, prompting a wave of civil disobedience protests that has been met with the firing of some educators. An earlier draft of the status law would have allowed authorities to review the personal electronic devices of teachers, which was later dropped from the legislation.