Figure 23: Number of pupils and students in full-time school-system education
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 Kindergarten
Primary school Vocational school Secondary school Tertiary 2000
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Million persons
thousand students completed the eighth grade, i.e. graduated from primary school, and nearly all of them continued their stud-ies at secondary school, thus enhancing their chances of finding a job later.
The number of students in full-time sec-ondary education rose only to a very small extent over the last school year: 573 thousand students enrolled for school year 2006/2007, 400 more than last year. The composition of the number of students by type of institutions follows the structure of training observed in the course of the past few years.
At present 23% of the total number of those enrolled are studying in vocational schools not leading to a G.C.S.E., 42% in vocational secondary schools and 35% in grammar schools. This distribution is essentially equivalent to that of the last school year, the shift lasting for several years towards secondary education leading to a G.C.S.E. has stopped.
The upward trend of the 8 and 6-grade grammar school education having started at the end of the 1980s came to a halt, the former rapid rise in the number of new entrants slowed down. In school year 2006/2007, 64 thousand students attend this type of grammar school education, 27 thousand of whom are of primary school age (pursuing their studies in grades 5–8).
In school year 2006/2007 the number of students in the vocational training grades of schools providing vocational training (vocational schools and vocational second-ary schools) in full-time form is 128 thou-sand, two thousand students fewer than one year before. In the past five years the number of full-time students has not signif-icantly changed despite the fact that this number is some ten thousand higher than in school year 1999/2000.
The number of full-time students in vocational secondary schools has hardly changed since the turn of the millennium:
they number 244–248 thousand (243 thou-sand in school year 2006/2007). A relative-ly high rise in number was experienced in school year 2003/2004, when eight thou-sand more full-time students attended vocational secondary schools than a year before.
The number of full-time students in grammar schools has been permanently growing. In 2006 it reached 200 thousand, three thousand higher than the previous year and 25 thousand more than at the turn of the millennium.
Owing to an earlier increase in the num-ber of students attending secondary educa-tion the number of secondary school stu-dents who graduated from full-time educa-tion with a G.C.S.E. in 2006 reached 77 thousand, around half of which was repre-sented by grammar school students and the other half by vocational secondary school students. The same year 26 thousand stu-dents passed school-leaving examinations in vocational schools and 25 thousand did so in vocational secondary schools.
In the past few years tertiary educa-tion has expanded at a rate higher than ever before, in which process the number of students went substantially up. In academ-ic year 2006/2007, 239 thousand young people matriculated in full-time tertiary education at various levels. This figure comprises 59 thousand students in tertiary undergraduate (BSc) training, 160 thou-sand in university and college-level educa-tion, furthermore, 8500 persons in higher vocational programmes, 5600 students in undivided training, and another 5600 in professional further training, PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) or DLA (Doctor of Liberal
Arts) training. Whilst the state finances the courses for 78.6% (a lower and lower per-centage) of full-time tertiary education stu-dents, distance learning students are all studying at their own expense.
There are 165 thousand full-time school teachers employed in public education in the school year examined, which is equiva-lent to the previous year. Of the 22 thou-sand teachers in tertiary education, 16,400 are employed full time, 2 thousand part time and 3700 on contracts.
Nearly all young people have been involved in education, thus the role of evening and correspondence courses in primary education has been shrinking gradually, while it has shifted towards sup-plementary education in secondary schools. In this school year 2300 persons are studying in primary, and 96 thousand in secondary adult education, this latter being slightly more than in the previous school year. 14 thousand people passed the G.C.S.E. examination in the frame of adult education in 2006.
Evening, correspondence and distance learning courses have been especially wide-spread in tertiary education: the number of students was 178 thousand in 2006/2007.
This is 8% less than in the previous year, con-sequently the dynamic growth in the last few years stopped and turned into a decrease.
Government expenditure on educa-tion in 2005, including accumulation expenditure, amounted to over HUF 1170 billion, 7% more than the year before. 74%
of this amount was spent on public educa-tion (kindergarten, primary and secondary education), 19% on tertiary education, and the rest on training outside school system.
Vocational training at workplaces has an outstanding importance from the
growth, restructuring according to market needs as well as managing unemployment and creating social safety. When qualifying the competitiveness of organisations, the training factor plays a more and more con-siderable role in case of both decision-mak-ers and researchdecision-mak-ers. According to a survey conducted by the HCSO in 2006, 49% of businesses provided some kind of opportu-nities for their employees to participate in continuous training in 2005, which is a sig-nificant, some 12 percentage point increase compared to year 1999 data. Nonetheless, participation rate (participants in training as a percentage of persons employed at businesses supporting training) fell by 3 percentage points to 23%. Therefore, the programmes of firms providing training concerned relatively fewer employees in 2005.
Certainly the size and sectoral classifica-tion of an organisaclassifica-tion substantially influ-ence its willingness of training. Though tra-ditional education (at courses) remains the most frequent form of training, participa-tion at conferences and seminars as well as gaining experiences in a workplace envi-ronment are more and more essential, too.
The survey examined the extent to which businesses supported the training of their employees by ensuring working time allowance: annual working time allowance per participant practically did not change (38 hours). However, the rate of training cost to total labour cost has significantly risen since 1999: from 1.2% to 2.5%.
51% of business organisations did not support the professional training of their employees in any form in 2005. When examining the reasons for this, according to over four fifths of respondents the existing skills of their employees meet the present HUNGARY, 2006
for the lack of training were the employ-ment of highly qualified new employees, high costs and the lack of time.
Research and development, innovation
Expenditure on R&D activities totalled HUF 207.8 billion in 2005, equivalent to a 14.5% rise at current prices over the previ-ous year. Owing to the dynamic develop-ment, the rate of expenditure to GDP grew from 0.89 to 0.95%. The EU-25 aver-age was 1.77% in both years, thus our lag somewhat lessened.
The number of research and devel-opment units in Hungary was 2516 in 2005, 25 fewer than a year before. R&D activity was pursued by a total of 49,723 persons, 0.2% more than in 2004. The number of scientists increased by 3.2%, while there were 2.4% fewer assistants and 6.5% fewer other manual and non-manual workers. The calculated staff number – converted into full-time equivalents – rose
more dynamically than the actual staff size, by 1.8% in the average, of which by 6.5% for scientists. The upward trend of the calcu-lated staff number is due to the significant increase in the enterprise sector: 10.3% in total and 16.2% among scientists. This counterbalanced the 3.9% fall in the terti-ary education sector and the some 0.8%
growth in the government sector. The num-ber of scientists in these latter two sectors changed more favourably than the average.
The difference in the dynamics of R&D activities by sectors is indicated by the changes of expenditure,too. Its amount went up to the highest extent at
enterpris-es: by 20.2%, while the rise was 17.1% in tertiary education and 8.5% in the govern-ment sector. As opposed to the previous year the growth of capital expenditure was higher than that of current expenditure in 2005. The former was up by 27.8%, while the latter by 13.7% on the average. The increase of R&D capital expenditure in ter-tiary educational institutions was outstand-ing: 64.2%.
2003 2,470 48,681 23,311 175.8 0.95
2004 2,541 49,615 22,826 181.5 0.89
2005 2,516 49,723 23,239 207.8 0.95
a Full-time equivalent staff number.
b Including government funds used outside the R&D units observed, as well as government funds spent on the hon-orariums, salary supplements of scientific degrees, and also the amounts of state scientific scholarships; not includ-ing the current expenditure on related activities.
Year Number of R&D units
Actual staff number of scientists and engineers
Calculated staff number of per-sons employed in research and development
(persons)a
Total expendi-ture on research and experimen-tal development (billion HUF)b
R&D expendi-ture as % of
GDP Table 6: Major data on research and development
Government budget accounted for 49.4% of funding for R&D, and thus contin-ued to play a dominant role, though this figure is lower than in the previous year.
The share of enterprises in funding – as a result of their above-average, 21.7% rate of increase – rose from 37.1 to 39.4%. The proportion of R&D expenditure originating from abroad and other domestic sources have hardly changed for years. In EU mem-ber states enterprises financed 53.4% of R&D expenditure in the average, while the share of the government sector in funding was 35.7%.
The composition of research and devel-opment expenditure by type of activities changed as well. The share of basic research was 27.9%, which was a significant drop by 6.7 percentage points in one year, while the proportion of applied research and experi-mental development grew by 2.5 and 4.2 percentage points, respectively.
There were 22,935 research and devel-opment projects being pursued in 2005, up by 1.4% on the previous year.
The number of publications in connec-tion with research and development activities changed in a different manner by type of publications. Whilst fewer books and parts of books were prepared, the number of articles, conference publi-cations and CD-ROMs rose, though the number of publications per 100 scientists increased only in case of conference pub-lications.
HUNGARY, 2006
Figure 24: Research and develop-ment expenditure by financial
resources, 2005
Corporate 39%
Government budget
49%
International 11%
Other national 1%
Central Hungary 47.8 63.4 65.1 69.4
Central Transdanubia 6.4 5.0 5.1 4.8
Western Transdanubia 7.5 4.2 4.2 3.4
Southern Transdanubia 8.2 5.8 5.3 3.2
Northern Hungary 5.6 4.1 4.1 2.9
Northern Great Plain 11.9 8.4 8.0 9.0
Southern Great Plain 12.6 9.1 8.2 7.3
(%)
Region Number of R&D units
Total staff Of which: scien-tists and
engi-neers R&D expenditure full-time equivalent number
Table 7: Regional distribution of the main research and development indicators
As before, the decline in the number of patent applicationscontinued at a rapid pace. The nearly 45% drop in 2004 was fol-lowed by a 52% fall in 2005, when the num-ber of foreign applications was 70% fewer than one year before.
The uneven regional distribution of research and development activities remained unaltered, owing to the role of Budapest the strong dominance of Central Hungary continued to prevail, and the ranking of regions was also unchanged.
Culture
Over 11 thousand books were published in 2006, of which a little more than 38 million copies were printed. The number of titles diminished by 1500, while the number of copies was 10% lower than the previous year. In 2006, 30% of the books pub-lished were technical, and 23% literary, which are almost equal to former years. As for the number of copies, textbooks and lit-erary works had the leading role (their shares were 35 and 27%, respectively).
Total book turnover in 2006 increased by nearly 5% at current prices on the year before, and thus reached HUF 66 billion.
The highest turnover was in school text-books and language text-books (26.4%) as well as educational works (24.3%).
In 2005 there were more than 9000 public, specialised and school library service units, half of which were school libraries. The essentially unchanged demand for libraries over the previous year is indicated by the small change in the number of registered users, bor-rowings and borrowers. One in seven resi-dents is registered at a library, and users bor-row one book every two weeks on average.
Public libraries contained 45 million library units (books, bound journals etc.) in
the year examined, which was approxi-mately one third of total library stock. The nearly 1.5 million users registered in public libraries was a small growth (by two thou-sand persons) on the previous year, one in three registered users was 14 years old or younger. However, the number of units lent – 31 million – was almost one and a half million fewer. The biggest public library stocks (compared to the population size) are in the counties of Transdanubia.
Four fifths of the time that can be spent on cultural and entertainment activi-ties is taken up by watching TV in Hungarian households. Cinema atten-dance has fallen by more than 2 million since the turn of the millennium, while the-atre attendance has been up by 400 thou-sand, of which, however, lessened by some 100 thousand in 2006 on the previous year.
Receipts from tickets per cinema-goer in cinemas in 2006 were HUF 826, nearly 300 more than in 2000. A theatre-goer had to pay over HUF 1400 in theatres in 2005.
Figure 25: Main indicators of book production
2000 2002 2004 2006
Number of books and booklets Number of copies of books and booklets, million 15
12 9 6 3 0 Thousand
50 40 30 20 10 0 Million
In the last few yearstelevision compa-nies founded in many different ways appeared in television broadcasting, and cable television services have become extremely widespread as well. The distribu-tion of public service broadcasting time has not changed considerably. The highest pro-portion (28%) was taken up in 2005, too by
literary and entertainment programmes, 69% of which was film projection. The share of cultural, arts and scientific programmes in total broadcasting time was 15%, while that of programmes concerned with news, current politics or economy was 16%.
The majority of the broadcasting time of the public service radio was taken up by HUNGARY, 2006
Figure 26: Programme structure of the public service radio and television, 2005
Entertainment, literature Current affairs, service magazine Music programme
Culture, arts, science Sports Religious
Radio Television
Central Hungary 285 7,629 2,673 134 2,974
Central Transdanubia 455 5,811 5,235 144 2,819
Western Transdanubia 640 5,693 5,699 147 3,205
Southern Transdanubia 586 5,824 5,998 145 3,036
Northern Hungary 500 6,324 5,011 139 2,951
Northern Great Plain 433 7,064 4,605 142 3,170
Southern Great Plain 331 6,703 4,976 171 3,243
Total 3,230 45,048 4,470 144 3,053
Region Library
service units
Total stock, thousand library units
Stock Registered
users Library units lent per thousand inhabitants Table 8: Public libraries by region, 2005
music programmes similarly to former years.
This accounted for 40% of the total broadcast-ing time in 2005. The share of programmes concerned with news, current politics or econ-omy was 16%, while that of current affairs and information programmes 10%. Literary and entertainment programmes, and cultural, arts and scientific programmes represented 8 and 21%, respectively.
Although in previous years there was a steady rise in the number of cinema per-formances due to the appearance of multi-plex cinemas in Budapest and other towns, this process stopped and even turned negative in 2006. Cinema atten-dance has been falling in the past five years, and stood at around 12 million in 2006.
In recent years 4 new films have been premiered in Hungary every week, approxi-mately half of which were American produc-tions. The majority of tickets – as a conse-quence of the large number of productions premiered – were sold for American films, their share is nearly 70% at present. The number of film-goers watching Hungarian films has been steadily increasing in the past few years: only 5% of tickets were sold for these performances in 2003, against 10% in 2004, 14% in 2005 and 15% in 2006.
There were 56theatres in 2006, 23 of which in the capital city. Tickets sold for the 15 thousand performances held in the country numbered 4.3 million. Budapest venues accounted for 48% of performances and 57% of audiences. The number of per-formances and attendance in villages has been relatively low, hardly 1% in recent years.
The number of performances and audi-ences of concerts organised by the National Philharmonia went up until 2003, and has fluctuated since then. Over 1428 performances were held in 2003, which
fig-ure decreased to 1378 in 2006. During the same period attendance fell from 470 thou-sand to 432 thouthou-sand (which was over 20 thousand fewer than the previous year).
Interest in museums and exhibitions organised there has slightly been up in the last period due to the expansion of domes-tic and international tourism and the exten-sion of the institutional network. Attend-ance expanded as a result of a growing num-ber of exhibitions, programmes organised in museums as well as the increasing num-ber of professional presentations. Muse-ums, museum collections or exhibition halls can be found almost in every town and in over one tenth of villages. Attendance at the nearly 2800 exhibitions organised in these was 11.3 million in 2005, 600 thousand more than the previous year and almost one and a half million more than in 2000.
Attendance at the events of cultural institutes, even despite the expansion of indoor and other alternative forms of leisure, has somewhat increased in 2005 over the year before. The number of insti-tutes also rose to a low extent.
Cultural expenditure of the gov-ernment in 2005 was less than HUF 170 billion. This amount was lower than the level in 2004 both at current prices and compared to GDP (nearly 0.8%). Majority of the expenditure – HUF 99 billion, which was 5 billion higher than the previous year – was spent on the maintenance of cultural institutes (libraries, arts and community centres, museums). The government sub-sidised arts establishments by HUF 44 bil-lion in 2005, which, however, declined by 4.5 billion in one year. Government expen-diture on book production and newspaper publication was also reduced but the amounts spent on the activities of zoologi-cal and botanizoologi-cal gardens increased.
ment
During the past three years the world economy went through one of the most important upward business periods in course of the recent decades. The annual average economic growth rate slightly exceeded 5% between 2004 and 2006.
According to estimations of the Inter-national Monetary Fund the gross domestic product of the entire world rose by 5.4%, at a rate not observed since the seventies. It deserves special attention, and it means a favourable change for Hungary that the economic upturn was felt also in the European Union in 2006 opposite to the situation in the previous year. The average economic growth rate (7.9%) of the devel-oping countries exceeds that (3.1%) of advanced regions more than twice. Eight percentile expansion of the world trade and some 30 percentile growth of the value of FDI equally demonstrate the deepening international economic relations.
That is, the economic growth remained lively, nevertheless, some unfavourable events, mainly of financial character were also observed in 2006. Among them we find the narrowing financial liquidity fol-lowing an expansion in the previous years.
This resulted in an upward trend of inter-ests equally in advanced and developing countries, and in some countries it was accompanied by temporary or lasting weakening of national currencies. Among raw materials especially the price rise of metals was drastic; however, the crude oil
In addition, political tensions which deep-en uncertainties and risks mainly in certain developing regions prevailed.
In the United Statesthe gross domes-tic product rose by 3.3% in 2006, a little faster than in the previous year (3.2%). The growth surplus over the European Union, prevailing since 2002, narrowed, and it dis-appeared in Q4 2006 as a result of unfavourable processes taking place during the entire year. Opposite to former years, external trade positively contributed to the GDP due to the upturn in exports.
Consumption and investment dynamics lagged behind those in the previous year and the GDP growth. High current account deficit and decreasing real estates prices invariably represent risk.
Gross domestic product of Japan in-Figure 27: Growth of GDP compared to the same quarter of the previous
year (with seasonal and working-day adjustment)
Q1 Q1 Q1 Q1
2001 2003 2005 2006
Hungary EU-25
United States 6
5 4 3 2 1 0
%
since 1998. The two major Asian develop-ing countries were able to grow invariably at a rate observed in the previous 2–3 years: the economic growth reached 10% in China, while 8–9% in India. In China the current account surplus increased at quite a rapid rate during 2005–2006, and it reached already 9% of GDP.
Among regions and countries with the most remarkable economic potentials, the greatest growth acceleration occurred in EU-25during 2006 over 2005, the gross domestic product rose by 2.9%. However, this took place over a relatively low base:
namely, in 2004 only a short upturn fol-lowed the lasting slump at the beginning of the new millennium, and the economic growth rate decreased again below 2% in 2005. One of the sources of the accelerating growth was the gross fixed capital forma-tion, expanding faster than GDP (by 3%
and 5.2% resp. in 2005 and 2006). On the one hand, former development projects, and, on the other hand, favourable world economic outlook contributed to the fact that exports – opposite to the period 2003–2005 – could expand faster than imports in 2006. However, external trade surplus of goods and services relative to GDP decreased due to deteriorating terms of trade. Consumption increased at a slow-er rate than GDP, so the structure of the economic growth remained favourable.
During 2006 euro appreciated, but it did not reach its level at the beginning of 2005;
and according to export data it does not endanger the international competitiveness of the eurozone. Labour market processes and fiscal position also shifted to an
advan-Almost in every member state of the European Union the economic growth accelerated, and considerable slowdown was observed nowhere. In Germany the upturn was quite strong, following an eco-nomic growth of around 1% during 2004–2005 a GDP expansion of 2.7% was reached in 2006. In Italy a similar process was observed: in 2005 the economy was still stagnating, however, it expanded by 1.9% in 2006. The economy's performance also improved in France although to a smaller extent (by 2.2%), and the same holds for Spain (3.9%) and the United Kingdom (3.9%), the latter countries lastingly indi-cate a faster economic growth than the aver-age growth rate in the European Union. (In 2006 the gross domestic product expanded on the average by 2.7% in EU-15.)
In the Central and Eastern Europe-an region the average economic growth rate of countries, joining the European Union in 2004, has been at least twice as much since 2003 as that of the old member states. Due to the domestic demand and the deepening business uplift in the European Union several countries (Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia) reached an economic growth of outstandingly high rate in 2006, and the average GDP of this region expand-ed by 6% (while in 2004–2005 at an annu-al rate around 5%). Polish economy, repre-senting the largest economic potentials, expanded, due to the growing domestic demand, by 5.8% in 2006. Gross domestic product of the Czech Republic rose by 6.1%, at a similar rate as in 2005; the domestic use increasingly affected the economic growth. As a result of the climbing exports