While vaccination is compulsory in state-maintained institutions, this is not the case in those run by the church, or private schools (where the institution's leader may have the final say).Continue reading
So far, almost 19 percent of teachers who have not been vaccinated do not want to receive the vaccine, according to a survey by the Democratic Union of Teachers (PDSZ), 24.hu reports. Erzsébet Nagy, a member of the union’s executive committee, spoke about this on Spirit FM‘s morning program, Aktuál.
Public education employees have until December 15th to receive their first dose of a covid vaccine. If they fail to do so, they will receive a notice to make up for the missed vaccination within 15 days, giving them until the end of December. Those who still refuse to get vaccinated will be sent on unpaid leave from then on. Their contract of work may be terminated after one year.
The PDSZ carried out an internal survey on the vaccination of teachers: as of Wednesday morning, 8,732 teaching staff had been obliged to be vaccinated, based on data from 217 institutions, and almost 19% (1,637 people) had not been vaccinated. According to Erzsébet Nagy, although feedback has not yet been received from all institutions, it is likely that this data is mostly from those with relatively high vaccination coverage.
She thinks that teachers who do not take the vaccination will look for other jobs if they are sent on unpaid leave, because they cannot afford to drop out of work and be without social security.
It would be a huge problem if they could not employ unvaccinated teachers. She gave the example of a vocational school with 490 students, where 50 staff members do not want to be vaccinated, making the school unsafe to run. Nagy said it would even be difficult to find supervisors for groups of pupils, not to mention the need for segregation and group splitting.
She stressed that people’s livelihoods are at stake and that those who remain in the institution will have to do extra work, which raises questions about how they will deliver the quality of education that students expect.
Featured photo illustration by Zsolt Czeglédi/MTI
