Teaching Profession Becoming More Attractive to Young People

Record-high teacher training application figures show that the profession is becoming increasingly attractive to young people. The new law on teachers’ careers has increased interest in this field, and teaching has become more prestigious, Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, Bence Rétvári, told MTI.

According to Bence Rétvári, this year, 18,845 people applied for teacher training, 10,514 of them were admitted, and 9,674 of them can study on state scholarships. The number of applicants has not been so high in the last six years, and it could rise even further with the results of the prolonged entrance examination, he stressed.

This year’s number of ten and a half thousand teacher trainees is much higher than the nine thousand of ten years ago (2013) or the five thousand of twenty years ago (2003),”

Bence Rétvári underlined.

“There is a good chance that the number of new teachers will increase in the coming years. It is a great success that the number of new teachers is not decreasing, but has increased by 67 percent this year,” said the State Secretary, adding that

one of the biggest increases is in elementary school teacher and kindergarten teacher training, where the number of new students has doubled, but the number of new students enrolled in teacher training has also increased by almost a third,”

Rétvári said.

He pointed out that the new law on teachers’ careers is much more favorable for those starting their careers than the previous civil servant wage scale. As the new career system includes a performance salary, a young person also has a chance to get a higher salary. The new career path eliminates the elements of pay that penalize young teachers,” he added.

“Importantly, the new teacher career law has laid the foundations for a large-scale increase in teacher pay. If the EU stops arbitrarily withholding the funds Hungary is entitled to under the law, the 10-10 percent pay rise this year and next year could more than double. This will mean that in five years’ time, by the time the new recruits graduate, the average teacher salary will be one million forints (EUR 2,569),” the State Secretary concluded.

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