The statements of the left-wing Prime Minister candidate, Péter Márki-Zay, highlight the fact that he confirms the anti-church position of Gyurcsány's DK: he would withdraw most of the state support from church-maintained schools, thereby degrading the students of church schools to second-class status.

The popular theme of the left and the opposition media is state support for church-maintained schools; a recurring question for years, which is based on fundamentally false information. One of the (false) claims of Gyurcsány's DK, which is known to be anti-church, is that church schools receive more state support than state schools.

However, this claim has already been refuted with facts and studies in many cases.

Already in 2019, DK's Gergely Arató "Why is a student attending a church school worth four times more to the government than his/her counterpart studying in a public school?" addressed an immediate question to the Minister of Human Resources. In it, he complained that state and church schools receive the same amount of support.

The parliamentary state secretary of the Ministry of Human Resources drew attention to the fact that the government follows the principle of equal funding, in Hungarian: we provide the same support for a student in a church school as for a student in a public school.

a technical article published in the pedagogy magazine Új Köznevelys . What's more, the article pointed out that "church schools do not receive a higher amount of support, on the contrary: at the end of each budget year, their allowance must be balanced with the church's additional support for public education in order to receive the same amount for their students as the maintainers of public schools."

Ferenc Gyurcsány's wife, Klára Dobrev, expressed this position herself last year. At that time, the presidency of the Evangelical Church of Hungary drew attention to the fact that Klára Dobrev had made untruths about the financing of church schools.

The sentimental attitude of the left towards church schools is not surprising. During the administration of Ferenc Gyurcsány, in 2005, crowds protested when it was revealed that according to the draft 2006 budget, church educational institutions would receive HUF 5-6 billion less per year than state ones.

And in 2008, the Constitutional Court had to intervene after the normative funding of church schools was entered into law, well below the funding level of state and municipal schools.

Since 2010, however, the principle of equal funding has been in effect, meaning that students of church schools cannot be disadvantaged. In spite of what the left tries to say to the contrary, the normative support of state and church institutions does not differ from one another, all students are equal.

This would be abolished by Péter Márki-Zay and the left, who, based on their declarations, reduced the support of church schools by a quarter, thereby degrading the students who attend them to second-class status.

Source: Vasarnap.hu

Photo: Zsolt Szigetváry/MTI