Part I — Situation overview

On 30 August 2026 the Democratic Union of Teachers (PDSZ) addressed an open letter to education minister Judit Lannert: they asked her to state unambiguously, by the start of the school year — that is, by the opening on 1 September — whether staff working in posts supporting upbringing and teaching (in the Hungarian abbreviation: NOKS) can count on a pay rise. If no guarantee arrives, the union will begin surveying the staff’s willingness to strike. The demand contains two figures: the PDSZ regards the 25 per cent rise contained in the governing party’s election programme as acceptable as a first step, but over the longer term it is asking for 40 per cent, and for a gross salary of 720 thousand forints in support posts requiring a higher education degree — precisely the amount of the lowest salary due to teachers. The minister’s earlier position has not changed: in May she said it was not certain that there would be cover for it in this year’s budget, and in August that the subject was on the agenda, that negotiations were under way, but that no decision had yet been taken.

The story is important in itself, but it does not stand alone. On the same weekend two government-critical papers also wrote that tension is building up in the law enforcement rank and file over the pay rise that has failed to materialise. Interior minister Gábor Pósfai had earlier stated that the full review of the pay settlement of the law enforcement sector had been completed, and that the final package of proposals would be assembled by the end of August — but by 30 August he had not announced it. The background data are serious: the minister himself spoke of some nine thousand police officers missing from the establishment nationwide, and in June the Budapest police chief set out before the Budapest General Assembly that in the capital only 5,962 of the 7,997 established posts were filled.

According to MIAK the two affairs have to be regarded as a single problem, and that problem is not the level of pay but the absence of a sequence. The promises of public service pay settlement run sector by sector, independently of one another, with different timings — and every sector is in the position of having to force an answer through its own bargaining power. This structure necessarily reproduces the strike threat and internal dissatisfaction, because there is no public document from which anyone could learn when their sector’s turn will come and why precisely then. And the case of the school support posts is particularly instructive: this group was consistently left out of the earlier rises in the teacher career path, because they did not belong to the teacher category — sectoral logic therefore produces those left out not only between professions but within professions as well.

Part II — Foundations in the literature

Three points of reference in the literature present themselves for interpreting the public service pay dispute. The book World Class by Andreas Schleicher (the OECD’s director for education, head of the PISA survey) shows that teacher pay is not an independent social question but one of the decisive inputs of the system’s quality: where pay is not competitive, qualified labour leaves the profession, regardless of how much the state otherwise spends on education. At the same time the work Visible Learning by John Hattie (New Zealand education researcher, who synthesised more than 800 meta-analyses) warns that the most hotly disputed structural questions often have the smallest effect on pupils, and that a measurement plan therefore has to be attached to every increase in resources, otherwise the result cannot be judged afterwards. And the memoir From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore’s first prime minister, the architect of the Singaporean administrative model) describes the single worked-out practice that closed the pay dispute institutionally: the automatic, formula-linked adjustment of public service pay to private sector earnings. The detailed treatment of the literature — author by author, with quotations — can be found in section 6.4 Literature in detail.

Part III — MIAK’s concrete proposal

MIAK proposes three measurable measures. The first closes the current dispute, the second prevents the next one, the third gives the dispute an institutional home.

3.1 A single public timetable for public service pay (by the submission of the 2027 budget)

MIAK proposes that the Government publish, by the submission of the 2027 budget bill, a single pay timetable covering every public service sector. The timetable should give, sector by sector — education, policing, healthcare, social care, public administration — the target salary, the date of attainment and the source of the budgetary cover. It should also contain a separate line for those posts which the earlier career-path rises left out: for the non-teaching posts in schools, for the auxiliary staff of social care institutions, and for posts in healthcare outside the specialist-staff category. The timetable is not a promise but a sequence: it works because it is public and can therefore be checked afterwards. Where there is no cover, that too has to be stated — an answer of the “it is on the agenda, negotiations are under way” type will keep reproducing the strike threat for as long as not a single date stands beside it. The proposal is the first, immediately implementable step of programme point KI6.

3.2 Rule-based indexation instead of ad hoc bargains (from the 2028 budget cycle)

The recurrent structural fault of the Hungarian public service pay system is that pay does not move according to a rule but jumps as the result of a political bargain — and then, after the jump, loses its value again, and nothing happens until the next bargain. MIAK proposes that from the 2028 budget cycle public service basic pay be linked to a formula fixed in advance and promulgated in law: to a specified proportion of the gross average earnings of the national economy as measured by the Central Statistical Office (KSH — the institution that publishes official statistical data), with a multiplier differentiated by sector. The annual review of the formula would be automatic, while changing the multiplier would require a separate, public decision. Singaporean practice (see 6.4.3) implemented precisely this structure from 1995, and there the introduction of the formula closed the situation in which public service pay trailed two to three years behind the private sector. In a Hungarian adaptation the level of the multiplier is a political decision — MIAK gives no figure for it — but rule-basedness is a professional requirement.

3.3 A tripartite pay consultation forum, with compulsory data background (from the first half of 2027)

At present there is no permanent forum in which the public service pay dispute would run along data, in a predictable order — which is why the dispute ends up in the channel of open letters, questions posed on social media and strike-willingness surveys. MIAK proposes that from the first half of 2027 a tripartite pay consultation forum be set up which meets once a year with a compulsory data background: it would issue a pay guideline on the basis of the KSH’s sectoral earnings statistics, the sectoral breakdown of vacant posts and of rates of leaving the profession, and productivity and cost-of-living indicators. The guideline would not be binding, but the Government would have to justify publicly any departure from it. This is the content of programme point FO10, and on the data side it is served by the FO1 employment data platform.

The three proposals are bound together by a shared principle: the question of pay has to be taken out of the logic of bargaining power and moved into the logic of rules. As long as what counts is which sector can make itself heard more loudly before the start of the school year or a public safety crisis, the system will keep punishing those groups least able to exert pressure — and the school support posts are precisely such a group.

Part IV — Expected effects and risks

Dimension Expected effect Risk
Education The support posts become fillable; the start of the school year becomes more predictable The public timetable also fixes the order of waiting — in the sectors placed further back tension may rise in the short term
Policing Leaving the profession may slow if the rank and file can see a date ahead of them Making up the staff shortage will take years; a pay rise on its own will not bring back the unfilled posts
Budget Rule-based indexation makes the expenditure path plannable Formula-linked pay rises even in an economic downturn, if it contains no element responding to the cycle
Public administration The crisis communication burden falls, because the dispute gets a permanent forum The forum may become formal if the Government regularly departs from the guideline without substantive justification

The most important question for weighing runs between rule-basedness and budgetary room for manoeuvre. The advantage of formula-linked pay is that it takes the pay decision out of the political cycle; its disadvantage is that it raises pay in a downturn as well, precisely when revenues are falling. That is why, in MIAK’s proposal, the annual review of the formula is automatic while the multiplier is the subject of a separate, public decision — so that in a crisis there is an exit point, but its price has to be paid in the form of political responsibility. The proposal tips over to the risk side if the timetable fixes target figures for which there is no cover: in that case publicity does not reduce but increases the loss of trust. A public timetable that is not kept is worse than the absence of a timetable.

Part V — Measurability and summary

5.1 What is worth following? (proposed KPIs)

The performance indicators below (KPIs, Key Performance Indicators) are MIAK’s proposals, not government decisions:

  • Timetable coverage: whether a pay timetable containing dates and covering every public service sector has appeared by the submission of the 2027 budget bill (yes/no).
  • Vacancy rate: the vacancy rate of non-teaching posts in schools and of law enforcement posts — the proposed target is a substantive reduction, over 24 months, of the shortage currently measured at around 25 per cent at the Budapest level in law enforcement.
  • Leaving the profession: the annual exit rate of law enforcement staff with more than twenty years of service — proposed target: that it should not rise above the 2026 level.
  • Dispute resolution indicator: how many announced strike-willingness surveys turn into an actual stoppage of work. If the forum and the timetable work, this number approaches zero.

5.2 Summary

MIAK’s key message: the current dispute is not about the pay of school staff and not about a police pay rise, but about the fact that public service pay settlement has no public sequence. As long as it has none, every sector is forced to extract an answer through its own capacity to exert pressure — and in that competition it is consistently those who would need it most who lose out. MIAK asks the Government to publish, by the submission of the 2027 budget, a single cross-sectoral pay timetable, and asks the unions to formulate the setting-up of the forum as part of the pay demand, not just the percentage.

Two MIAK foundational values are in play here. Universal representation, because the group most often left out — the school support posts — is precisely the one least visible in public discourse; a public timetable puts an end to that invisibility. And data-drivenness, because the pay guideline has a measurable basis (earnings statistics, vacant posts, leaving the profession), and the use of these indicators steers the dispute into a verifiable channel. The question is not whether a pay rise is due, but according to what rule and in what order.

Part VI — Justifications and further sources

6.1 The framing of the press, spectrum by spectrum

The left-liberal and the general public affairs bands carried the news in an almost identical frame: HVG and 24.hu both cited the RTL news report, placing the union’s open letter and the minister’s earlier budgetary argument side by side. Both papers highlighted that the governing party’s programme had contained a 25 per cent rise for non-teaching school staff — that is, the framing was directed at the distance between the promise and its delivery, not at the merits of the union’s demand.

In the economic band Portfolio was the only outlet to bring out the figures as well: the PDSZ’s long-term target of 40 per cent and the gross salary of 720 thousand forints requested for support posts requiring a higher education degree, together with the observation that the problem is not new. It was acknowledged under the previous government too, but no substantive measure followed. The paper’s framing was nonetheless political: the headline was sharpened towards the difficulty facing the government.

On the same weekend the conservative band ran a different sector: Magyar Nemzet worked up the dissatisfaction of the police rank and file with detailed background data (nine thousand missing police officers nationwide, the Budapest establishment figures, the intensified checks in July), while Mandiner turned a question posed on the social media page of a law enforcement interest group into news. This band therefore did not deny the education dispute but pushed to the fore another case arising from the same structural fault.

One thing is missing from all of the framings when compared: none of the bands asked how the demands of the two sectors relate to one another, and in what order they ought to be handled. Everywhere the dispute stayed within the sector.

6.2 Facts and data

Data Value Source
Addressee of the PDSZ open letter Judit Lannert, education minister HVG and 24.hu, 30 August 2026
Deadline for the answer the start of the school year on 1 September 2026 PDSZ open letter
Rise promised in the governing party programme 25% for non-teaching school staff HVG, 30 August 2026
The PDSZ’s long-term target a 40% rise; HUF 720,000 gross in support posts requiring a higher education degree Portfolio, 30 August 2026
National police staff shortage approx. 9,000 people Interior minister Gábor Pósfai; Magyar Nemzet, 30 August 2026
Budapest police establishment figures 5,962 of 7,997 established posts filled Norbert Tamás Baricska, Budapest police chief, Budapest General Assembly, June 2026
Budget earmarked for police presence in the capital HUF 750 million Telex, 17 July 2026
Gross average earnings, full-time HUF 754,700 KSH flash report, June 2026
Lower secondary teacher pay in the OECD average 88% of the earnings of full-time workers with a higher education degree Schleicher: World Class (on the basis of OECD data)

The last two rows of the table together give the scale of the problem: the gross salary of 720 thousand forints requested by the PDSZ is below the average earnings of the national economy as measured by the KSH. The demand is therefore not for privileged treatment but for convergence towards the average for a group of posts which requires a higher education degree.

6.3 Policy dimensions

  • Education (programme points) — the measurement plan to be attached to the pay settlement, the place of support posts in the career path system;
  • Employment policy (programme points) — the institutionalisation of wage bargaining, the district-level labour market data background;
  • Public administration and e-government (programme points) — a competitive public service pay system and rule-based indexation.

One constitutional-law distinction is important: law enforcement and education pay settlement fall within the competence of two different ministries, but the Government decides on the cover jointly, in the budget bill, and the law is adopted by Parliament. MIAK’s proposal is therefore not addressed to one or other minister but to the order of budgetary planning: cross-sectoral sequencing cannot be resolved at sectoral level.

6.4 Literature in detail

6.4.1 Andreas Schleicher: World Class

One of the central chapters of Schleicher’s book goes through those policy commonplaces behind which there is no evidence. In connection with the reduction of class sizes he points out that education systems are in fact faced with a choice: the same resource can be turned into smaller classes or into higher teacher pay, but not both. The book uses OECD data to describe how over the past decade this choice has consistently fallen the wrong way:

“If teachers’ salaries are not competitive, teachers will not invest in themselves; and even if they do, they are likely to leave the profession if their expertise is better used, recognised and more highly compensated elsewhere.”

According to Schleicher, lower secondary teachers in the OECD countries receive on average 88 per cent of the earnings of full-time workers with a higher education degree, and between 2005 and 2015 their pay rose by a mere 6 per cent in real terms, while in a third of the OECD member states it fell. The book’s other observation, directly relevant to the Hungarian situation, is that in some East Asian systems teacher pay is fixed by law among the best-paid public employee categories — that is, there pay is the subject of a rule, not of a bargain. In the case of the support posts at issue in the Hungarian debate this logic is even sharper: if pay stays lastingly below the national average, the post cannot be filled, and it is the school’s operation that seizes up, not merely its quality that deteriorates.

📖 Source: Andreas Schleicher: World Class

6.4.2 John Hattie: Visible Learning

From his synthesis of more than 800 meta-analyses Hattie draws the conclusion that education policy debate and the weight of the evidence regularly diverge: the most fiercely disputed structural questions often have the smallest measured effect. His calculation on the reduction of class sizes is the best-known example:

“This typical effect size of about d = 0.10–0.20 could be considered small especially in relation to many other possible interventions — and certainly not worth the billions of dollars that is required to reduce the number of children per classroom.”

It is important that this argument is not an argument against pay settlement. Hattie’s thesis is that the effect of structural and working-condition interventions has to be measured separately from the effect on pupil outcomes — and that the two must not be conflated. Translated to the Hungarian debate: the pay settlement of school support posts is primarily an operational question, that is, the aim is fillability and the securing of the school’s day-to-day functioning, not directly the improvement of pupil performance. If a measurement plan is attached to the pay settlement, then in a year’s time it will be possible to say what it produced: whether the number of unfilled posts fell, whether turnover fell. Without this the rise is indefensible after the event, and will be the first thing cut in the next budget debate. This measurement logic is carried forward by the O3 data-driven education development programme point.

📖 Source: John Hattie: Visible Learning

6.4.3 Lee Kuan Yew: From Third World to First

The chapter of Lee Kuan Yew’s memoir on public service pay describes exactly the problem the Hungarian government now faces: every few years the authorities were forced to raise pay after the event in order to narrow the gap continuously opening up relative to the private sector, and every such rise was a separate political battle. The solution was not a bigger rise but the formula:

“In 1995, Prime Minister Goh decided on a formula I had proposed that would peg the salaries of ministers and senior public officers to those of their private sector counterparts. This would automatically entitle them to an increase as incomes in the private sector increased.”

The formula tied public service pay to two-thirds of the earnings of private sector counterparts as shown by tax returns. Lee also reports that the introduction provoked considerable public outrage, yet the governing party still won the election a year and a half later — that is, rule-basedness was politically bearable. The Hungarian adaptation, MIAK’s KI6 programme point, takes over the same structure at a different level. Two qualifications are nonetheless essential. First, the Singaporean formula applied to the senior categories, whereas the Hungarian problem concerns the lower and middle bands of the staff — the structure of the formula can be taken over, its level cannot. Second, in Singapore the formula operated in a persistently growing economy; without an element responding to a downturn, such a rule would worsen the budgetary path in Hungary. That is why MIAK proposes that the formula be automatic while changing the multiplier be a separate, public decision.

📖 Source: Lee Kuan Yew: From Third World to First

6.5 International comparison

The principles described in the books also appear in several European practices. In the German public service pay system, within the framework of the Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst, federal and Land employers agree with the unions on multi-year pay rises with a schedule fixed in advance. Compared with the Hungarian situation the essential difference is not the size of the rise but the fact that the agreement applies to the entire public service at once, so there is no cross-sectoral competition for timing. In the Dutch and Danish models sectoral collective agreements likewise fix a multi-year horizon, and the pay data are supplied by an independent statistical office.

The British example illuminates the other side of MIAK’s proposal: in the Pay Review Bodies system there, independent bodies issue an annual recommendation on pay in the public service sectors, and the government is obliged to justify publicly any departure from them. This is precisely the logic of the FO10 tripartite forum: the recommendation is not binding, but departure requires an explanation — and it is this compulsion to explain that keeps the dispute on a data basis.

Public administration and e-government

  • KI6 — A competitive public service pay system

Employment policy

  • FO10 — Wage bargaining modernisation, tripartite pay consultation forum
  • FO1 — Employment data platform

Education

  • O8 — Performance-based teacher motivation
  • O3 — Data-driven education development

Proposed new programme point: A separate pay line for non-teaching school posts in the public service timetable — for the Education area.

6.7 List of sources

Press sources (MIAK press monitor, 31 August 2026 — topic 2):

  • [HVG] Sztrájkkal indulhat a tanév, ha nem rendezik az iskolai dolgozók bérét — https://hvg.hu/itthon/20260830_sztrajkkal-indulhat-a-tanev-ha-nem-rendezik-az-iskolai-dolgozok-beret
  • [24.hu] Béremelés vagy sztrájk: tisztázást vár a PDSZ az oktatási minisztertől a tanévkezdésig — https://24.hu/belfold/2026/08/30/pdsz-sztrajk-tanevkezdes-beremeles/
  • [Portfolio] Nehéz napokkal indulhat a tanév a Tisza-kormány számára: sztrájk jöhet az iskolákban — https://www.portfolio.hu/gazdasag/20260830/nehez-napokkal-indulhat-a-tanev-a-tisza-kormany-szamara-sztrajk-johet-az-iskolakban-859262
  • [Magyar Nemzet] Forrnak az indulatok a rendőröknél: a Tisza által ígért béremelés késése miatt sokan már a leszerelést fontolgatják — https://magyarnemzet.hu/belfold/2026/08/forrnak-az-indulatok-a-rendoroknel
  • [Mandiner] „Nagyon sok kolléga nevében kérdezem, hogy van valami infó erről?" — keresni kezdték a rendőrök a megígért béremelésüket — https://mandiner.hu/belfold/2026/08/rendor-beremeles-posfai-belugyminiszter

Knowledge base references (literature):

  • 📖 Andreas Schleicher: World Class
  • 📖 John Hattie: Visible Learning
  • 📖 Lee Kuan Yew: From Third World to First

MIAK internal materials:

  • MIAK policy area: Public administration and e-government (programme points; programme point ID: KI6)
  • MIAK policy area: Employment policy (programme points; programme point ID: FO10, FO1)
  • MIAK policy area: Education (programme points; programme point ID: O8, O3)
  • MIAK press monitor, 31 August 2026 — topic 2, score: 93/100

Supplementary public data sources:

  • KSH — sectoral earnings statistics and monthly flash report
  • OECD — Education at a Glance, teacher pay comparison
  • Eurostat — public service employment data

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