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1. Educational support
2. Social cohesion and equal opportunities

Educational support

There are two main strategies that identify specific target groups in the topic of the social inclusion of youth.

The National Youth Strategy 2009 – 2024 (Nemzeti Ifjúsági Stratégia 2009 – 2024) aimed at creating chances for different disadvantaged groups:

• Roma children/people: improve their situation and reduce their segregation and exclusion,
• disabled children and their families: improve their situation and 'take their requirements into account and treat them more sensitively',
• disadvantaged settlements and regions: reduce the level of exclusion.

The strategy expired in 2024 and has not been replaced (for more information see 1.3).

The National Social Inclusion Strategy 2030 (Magyar Nemzeti Társadalmi Felzárkózási Stratégia 2030) deals with:

• child poverty,
• Roma children issues and
• the inclusion of disadvantaged regions.

(For more information, see 4.3. Strategy for the Social Inclusion of Young People.)

Children and pupils in need of special support

The 12th Chapter of the Eurydice report defines the groups of children and pupils who receive special attention based on Public Education Act. Children and pupils in need of special support, including:

• children/pupils with special educational needs such as children/pupils with physical disability,
• children/pupils with social, learning and behavioural difficulties,
• exceptionally gifted children/pupils,
• disadvantaged children/pupils and those with multiple disadvantages and
• children/pupils undergoing long-term medical treatment.

Some other institutions and professionals provide services for children/pupils with special educational needs:

• institutions of the Pedagogical Assistance Service;
• separate special education institutions, conductive education institutions;
• integrated special education and conductive education institutions;
• inclusive schools and kindergartens;
• mobile network of special needs teachers;
• developmental educators. (Eurydice, chapter 12. Educational Support and Guidance)

Social cohesion and equal opportunities

The results of the Pisa Test

According to the Pisa Test, the performance of Hungarian students shows a negative trend, although the results in 2022 were close to the OECD average. In maths, the result of the 2022 test was the lowest since the start of the PISA tests. The same applies to reading competence, with the exception of 2014, when the result was worse than in 2022. In science, the performance of Hungarian students in 2022 was higher than in the previous tests, but did not reach the level of the 2011 results. The gap between the highest and lowest performing students has not changed since 2018.

In Hungary, the difference between the results of socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged students in mathematics (121 points) was greater than the OECD average (93 points).

Results of the Eurydice report from 2017

According to the Eurydice report on Citizenship Education of 2017, there are different programmes, policies aiming to enhance social cohesion: 

• the school community service programme (iskolai közösségi szolgálat),
• ministerial decree on the learning outcomes of teacher training.

The school community service programme, which means 50 hours of community work, is compulsory for obtaining the maturity exam. It aims to

• raise social awareness,
• improve the self-confidence and
• competencies of students, with an opportunity for career guidance.

The ministerial decree on the learning outcomes of teacher training requires the development of active citizenship among students and teaches students to be free from prejudices and to accept and respect different opinions and values. (For more information on the school community service, see sub-chapter 9.4.)

Equal access to digital education

To ensure the conditions of equal access to digital education for students and teachers, the Government made investments with a budget of HUF 205 billion (about EUR 525 million) jointly financed be EU funds. The following measures are planned to be implemented by the end of 2025:

• providing modern and interactive devices to primary and secondary schools (interactive panels, robotic devices, tools for the development of programming skills, drones) so the students would be more motivated, can be prevented from dropout and can acquire skills that are competitive in the labour market,
• providing own notebooks to students from 5^th and 9^th classes in an ascending system, so the students can benefit in and out of class the advantages of the digital pedagogy and the digital education and with this, the disadvantaged students have an equal opportunity to acquire these skills,
• providing notebooks for 55 000 teachers who have not gotten one yet from other EU or Hungarian sources and also they have to take part in a digital competence development training.

Until the end of 2024, providing notebooks has finished, and more than 3 012 schools received 579 000 notebooks, of which teachers own 55 000. In 2025, the government plans to continue providing other devices for digital educational transformation. Furthermore, a digital training programme is available for teachers to support the utilization of these digital devices in schools.

'Smart Classroom' for equal opportunities

The aim of the application of the Klebelsberg Centre (Klebelsberg Központ), called ''Smart Classroom' – Development of classrooms supporting digital education in state-financed schools'', was to create places in schools where modern digital tools are available such as laptops, 3D printers, interactive tables that can help students obtain the competencies needed in the future, thus, to provide them equal opportunities already in primary education.

The project had a budget of HUF 7 million (about EUR 18 000) and was implemented between 1 March 2022 – 22 December 2023 in the frame of an EFOP project.

For more information on social cohesion and equal opportunities, see 4.5 Initiatives Promoting Social Inclusion and Raising Awareness.