RAISING AWARENESS OF OUR ACTIVITIES
AMONG EDUCATIONAL PARTICIPANTS
Our Office has the opportunity of informing the public, while complying
with procedural guarantees. In addition to the publication of the annual
account on our activities, we inform the public on a regular basis through
the printed and the electronic press; through studies, presentations and
information which is published in several press products on our work,
case categories and experiences.
In order to enable the participants of education to take advantage of
the opportunities offered by our Office in the widest range possible,
we strive to raise the awareness of our proceedings through various means.
As of March 15th, 2001, our Office has Internet access in Hungarian and
in English at www.oktbiztos.hu,
where key information is available in the languages of national and ethnic
minorities in Hungary. This site offers our annual report, information
on our programmes and events, our officers and contact details. We have
provided a number of international organisations with our report for last
year, which has also been translated into English. In order to ensure
access to the proceedings of our Office for the blind and the sight-impaired
participants of education, a summary information bulletin on our activities
and our report for the Year 2000 has also been produced in Braille versions.
In 2001, two-day off-site office administration sessions were organised
in Pécs and in Békéscsaba, where forums offered an opportunity to meet
teachers, pupils, parents, and university and college students. In both
cities, an open complaints day offered a place and time for local residents
to meet the Commissioner for Educational Rights in private, to bring forward
their complaints in person, and to ask questions related to education.
If a complainant attending these events decided in the course of private
meetings to initiate proceedings at our Office, the complaint was recorded
in a protocol and our proceedings were launched accordingly.
Our Office was again present this year at the Pepsi Island Festival, a
major event, where those interested were welcomed in our own booth, in
the street of non-governmental organisations, every day during the Festival.
The visitors to the island had the opportunity during this one-week festival
to contact us with matters of educational law, which we attempted to answer
right on the spot, whenever this was possible. Those interested, had the
chance to complete tests designed for various types of institutions to
assess their knowledge of law, the results of which were evaluated with
the help of our officers.
The Commissioner for Educational Rights and his officers were invited
to numerous conferences at home and abroad to give presentations, all
of which we were able to accept. The growing international recognition
of our Office is signalled by the presentation given by the Commissioner
for Educational Rights in Stockholm, at the UNICEF conference which was
preparing the UN general assembly on children's rights, and the recommendations
identified by him being put forward to the general assembly. Our Office
was admitted to the membership of the community of ombudsmen by the European
Institute of Ombudsmen, the Commissioner for Educational Rights was invited
to the 6th European Conference of Ombudsmen.
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