78 percent of Fidesz voters would raise teachers' salaries, survey shows

Teachers, students and parents have been protesting for months to draw attention to the problems of Hungarian public education, to fight for a wage increase for teachers and to express their displeasure with the draft of the so-called status law, which the government proposed in response to the first protests, and which the teachers and students are referring to as "the revenge law". The proposed bill would further curb teachers’ autonomy, and it doesn’t address any of the issues because of which the protests started more than a year ago.

Nearly 70 percent of the Hungarian population agrees with the protests, according to a representative survey commissioned by Népszava and carried out by Publicus. The responses also showed that 30 percent of Fidesz voters agree with the protests.

There is even greater agreement on the need to raise teachers' salaries, with 90 percent of respondents being in favor of the move. Among Fidesz voters, 78 percent said so, while on the opposition side the figure was 98 percent. There was similar consensus among those in Budapest, with virtually all respondents in the capital saying that teachers' salaries should be raised. However, there is a wider difference in what the extent of the increase should be: Fidesz voters would reward teachers with the average gross salary, while opposition respondents would like to see a gross salary of 610,000 forints (1,600 euros).

The survey also revealed that Fidesz voters know virtually no teachers who have been forced to leave their jobs due to the government's measures (only 2 percent said they know such teachers), while among opposition voters, this figure is 20 percent.