Hungary's youth have delivered their best results to date in a reading test devised to measure competency in literacy.
Fourth grade students took part in the PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy) study right across Hungary last year, and the results show an improvement in education standards.
A total of 4,623 students from 209 classes in 149 Hungarian schools took part in the PIRLS study, which involved fifty countries. Students receive skill points based on their test result, and it is on the basis of these that the countries’ results are calculated.
László Palkovics, minister of State for Education, said that Hungarian schools have been maintained by the state since 2012, thanks to which operating conditions have become increasingly secure and the institutional system has become stable and more dependable. He also pointed out that education has received significantly more funding in recent years.
Hungary’s PIRLS results improved by 15 points compared to 2011, achieving 554 points last year, adding that only the students of eight countries had achieved better results, ten countries had achieved similar results to those of Hungary, and the education systems of 31 states produced worse education indices.
Hungarian girls achieved 13 percent higher points than boys, putting Hungary in an average position compared to other countries, but the difference between boys and girls remained below the international average.
A higher than average proportion of Hungarian fourth graders, 67 percent compared to the international average of 60 percent, said they were interested and felt activated by classwork, and felt that their teachers pay particular attention to their study needs and communicate their expectations.
The situation also improved somewhat with relation to the love of reading: in 2011, 22 percent of students said they didn’t enjoy reading, while last year this ratio was 20 percent.