BUDAPEST, January 13 A rally organized by non-governmental organizations demanding an increase in salaries for teachers is held on Saturday near the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the center of Budapest, the correspondent reports.
The Hungarian authorities previously stated that they plan to increase teachers' salaries by 32% in 2024. The organizers of Saturday's action — the Democratic Union of Teachers and the United Front of Students — in the announcement indicated their fears that the promised salary increase would be a «fraud» and called on supporters to «defend» the increase in teacher salaries.
On Saturday, about 250 protesters gathered in front of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the banks of the Danube, holding posters demanding higher teachers' salaries and cardboard cutouts of Interior Minister Sandor Pinter, the correspondent reports.
A year earlier, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which deals with education issues in Hungary, announced that in 2023 the increase in teachers' salaries would be 10% instead of the planned 21% due to the fact that EU countries froze Budapest's access to part of European funds funds.
According to statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, among its member countries, only Slovakia had lower teacher salaries between 2005 and 2020 than Hungary. Hungary has the lowest teacher salaries relative to the average salary of university graduates — 60%. As a result, the share of teachers under 30 years of age in Hungary is one of the lowest in Europe and is less than 5%, and the average age of teachers is 53 years old, reports the Telex portal.
The head of the Hungarian Prime Minister's Office, Gergely Gulyas, reported in October 2022 that teachers' salaries will increase by 20-30% over the next three years, as a result, by 2025 they will be able to reach 80% of the average salary of graduates. This plan, he said, can be implemented if Hungary gets access to the funds it is entitled to from EU funds. Guillas emphasized that the increase in teachers' salaries is a planned measure and is not related to the increasingly frequent protests in the fall of 2022.
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