The government is ready to mitigate “the damage students suffered during the coronavirus epidemic due to a lack of classroom education”, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office said in a video posted on an opposition Socialist MEP’s Facebook page on Tuesday.
Gergely Gulyás said that MEP István Újhelyi and trade unions had requested talks on the impacts of Covid on education, which were held on Monday afternoon.
“It is a shared responsibility and a shared goal, irrespective of political considerations, that (classroom) education should restart and
the harm caused by a lack of personal education should be reduced to a minimum,”
Gulyás said. Hungary has sufficient stocks of the coronavirus vaccine and “there is nothing against” starting the academic year in the classroom in September, he added.
The talks were attended by representatives of trade unions PSZ and PDSZ, as well as UNICEF Hungary.
Újhelyi told MTI that he had worked with experts on the field to develop the proposals they discussed with Gulyás, including comprehensive research of the mental effects of the pandemic on children, as well as a review of the school psychologist network nationwide.