Dear Reader!
This is the first report prepared by the Commissioner for Educational Rights. The Office of the Commissioner for Educational Rights is the first of its kind in the Hungarian public law system and was launched just more than a year ago.
Education directly affects the present and future of millions of people. When so many people spend so much time together, conflicts are bound to occur in their day-to-day interactions. In our view the problem is not that conflicts arise in educational institutions, the problem is that there are no satisfactory mechanisms to resolve such conflicts.
Law statutes determine the environment of the educational system. They set out the rights and obligations of the participants in the educational system and also set out the decision-making powers of local authorities. Besides the specific legislative acts on education, the Constitution, various international agreements and a number of other laws also provide rules that govern the relationships between the participants in education. In the course of the operation of educational institutions and the performance of the tasks of teaching, various decisions are made and measures consequently taken. However, sometimes the decisions that are made or the necessary measures that are taken may infringe upon the rights of others, despite or regardless the best of intentions.
A total of 630 complaints have been submitted, thousands of telephone calls have been received and, at conferences, hundreds of problems have been disclosed to the Office thus far. The year 2000 Report on our operations may be of assistance to pupils, students, parents, teachers, instructors and researchers. They are those who need to identify cases of infringement, those who seek legal remedy, those who want to make proposals and for those who want to file initiatives. The law may offer help in all of these areas but it cannot substitute for co-operation. Of course, we will not be able to describe here each of the cases our Office has been dealing with. We will try to present a selection of cases that is suitable for drawing general conclusions for day-to-day use. This does not mean that we have set up any order of importance among the cases. Every single complaint is important to us and we must carry out our tasks accordingly.
We are convinced that all of us may contribute to promote the development and consolidation of democracy at school and in higher education. This Office has recently joined the awareness process; so as to make additional contributions to an open, honest and professional dialogue on the democratic operation of higher education institutions and on the relationship between the teaching profession and legal regulations. We consider your opinion and comments highly important, therefore, we kindly ask you to share them with us.
Budapest, 15 March 2001 |
Lajos Aáry-Tamás
Commissioner for Educational Rights
|
|
