Country Report - Hungary

3rd Workshop on Training of Teachers of the Visually Impaired in Europe,
Warsaw, Poland, 3 - 6 April 2002

by mrs Beata Pronay and mrs Krisztina Kovacs

1. Legislation

1993: Education Act provides the rights + opportunities to parents to choose the school for their childres, including children with a handicap, they want.

1995: New National Curriculum for all children.

1997: Guidelines for the Education of children with special needs.

1998: Act on Equal Opportunities of people with special needs

2. Provisions

Staff: some schools employ resource room teachers, mostly not specialized in V.I., other schools employ part-time itinerant techers.

Equipment: optical aids (with the exception of CC-TV's) are provided on the base of Social Security laws.

Braillers are bought by the parents, with some financial help of the Association of the Blind.

Textbooks in braille are provided by the school for the blind.

3. Relation with the Special School for the V.I.

The 3 Special Schools for the V.I. have an itinerant service. They train mainstream teachers, visit the children in mainstream schools and organize activities to train special skills.

4. Tasks of itinerant teachers

• supporting v.i. children, parents and classroom teachers;
• organizing training courses for parents and mainstream teachers;
• performing educational and low vision assessment;
• teaching special skills to children: e.g. optical aids, braille, abacus, O&M etc
• organizing summercamps for v.i. children, visiting mainstream schools;
• writing guidebooks for teachers.

5. Task of University in preparing itinerant teachers

The department of Visual Impairment provides a 60 lesson course in integrational methodology for all student of the department, obligatory, for 4 credits.

Furthermore each student have to do an educational assessment of a v.i. mainstreamed child and to write a report on their findings.

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