Hardi Tamás - Tóth Károly (szerk.): Határaink mentén. A szlovák-magyar határtérség társadalmi-gazdasági vizsgálata (2008) (Somorja, 2009)
Esettanulmányok
Summary 229 Where the number of students decreased, the school leaders referred to the more rigorous regulations, as a consequence of which in several cases tuition fee has to be paid. Despite the regulations, in the majority of the institutions contacted no tuition fee has to be paid, or even if it is necessary, the headmasters usually use the possibility of providing allowances. The practical application of the legal regulation can be said to be flexible then, it is up to the leaders of the respective institutions if tuition fee is to be paid or not. It is not only the issue of tuition fee, however, that depends on the individual institutions; the admission procedure of the students also does. In some institutions the procedure is similar to those valid for the Hungarian students, while there are schools where students from Slovakia are admitted irrespective of the result of their admission exams (or without such exams), supporting this way their studies in Hungary. Among the settlements involved in the survey, Győr even has an agreement with a Slovakian municipality, Dunajská Streda on the education of students with Slovak citizenship and Hungarian ethnicity in Győr. The agreement has been signed by all new mayors entering office by now, it is still in effect. According to the agreement, if a student of Slovak citizenship wishes to study in Győr, s/he has to turn to the municipality of Dunajská Streda and s/he has to submit the official registration form stamped there to the municipality of Győr. The secondary schools specified in the registration form will receive the registration sheets of the students from the municipal government of Győr. The admission procedure is the same as that of the students with Hungarian citizenship, with the exception of the process mentioned above. The students can be divided into four basic categories as regards their purpose to study in the Hungarian institutions. Some students would definitely like to have higher education studies in Hungary, for which they feel it necessary to have final exams in a Hungarian secondary school. There are two reasons for this: on the one hand, they would like to study in Hungarian environment, on the other hand, because of the differences between the Hungarian and the Slovakian school leaving exams they think they have better chances with the Hungarian papers to be admitted to a higher education institution. The majority of the students would like to go on to a higher education institution in Budapest or Pécs. A small part of the students would like to continue their studies in higher education outside Hungary, but not necessarily in Slovakia; this is especially typical in the education of arts. The talks with the leaders of the institutions revealed two further smaller groups, of those who wish to do their secondary school studies for employment considerations. Some of them would like to work in Hungary later, a smaller part would like to find a job in Slovakia and come to the Hungarian side to study to have a higher level of training. The majority of the students come from the area close to the respective settlements; it is less typical that students arrive from larger distances, mostly due to the difficulties of travel. It was raised as an important issue in several institutions that the Hungarian students in Slovakia should be given the possibility to leam Slovak language, as they need to know the official state language as well, especially if they wish to return to Slovakia later to study or work. Among the contacted institutions, only a few provided training in Slovak language, but in one grammar school of Győr the final exams included the compulsory exams in Slovak language for the Hungarian speaking students from Slovakia. During the research we wanted to receive the opinions of the leaders of the educational institutions on the fact that students with Slovak citizenship but Hungarian ethnicity come to study to Hungary. The following opinions were expressed:
