1.
Education, literacy skills and employment in Hungary - a cross-country comparison

Leader: János Köllő (KTI/IE-HAS)
Participants: Mónika Bálint (KTI/IE-HAS), Blanka Bajnai (KTI/IE-HAS), Zsombor Cseres-Gergely (KTI/IE-HAS), Nándor Németh (KTI/IE-HAS), Zsuzsanna Szabó (KTI/IE-HAS)

Primary degree holders have extraordinarily low employment rates in Hungary and in other CEEs. To what extent can the continuing squeeze out of employment of this group be explained by the generally low level of knowledge of the uneducated population? What other factors contribute to the very low intensity of job search in this social stratum in a number of post-socialist countries including Hungary?

2.
The crisis of the Hungarian public education: - diagnosis and cure

Leader: Gábor Kertesi (KTI/IE-HAS)
Participants: Benő Csapó (SZTE)

What is the position of Hungarian public education by international comparison? What are its weak points and in what fields should changes be initiated so that the gap between the education system in Hungary and more efficient systems in leading countries be diminished?

3.
The labour market of teachers, teachers' (self)-selection and teachers' quality.

Leader: Júlia Varga (BCE, KTI/IE-HAS)
Participants: Zoltán Hermann (KTI/IE-HAS), Dániel Horn (BCE)

The quality of teachers' work is a major determinant in successful learning at schools. By using the existing data basis, up-dating and extending them we shall analyse the development of teacher's labour market and the relation between local government financing and the quality of teachers. We shall also deal with the regional inequalities in student achievements.

4.
School segregation and student achievement

Leader: Gábor Kertesi (KTI/IE-HAS)
Participants: Gábor Kézdi (KTI/IE-HAS)

What are the factors that contribute to and maintain school segregation? What is the main reason for the extremely poor performance of the 25 percent of Hungarian primary school students? The main focus of our project is the school segregation of students with low school performance and/or having disadvantageous social background. Our quantitative analysis will cover the whole Hungarian educational system. We shall calculate the degree of segregation both among schools and within schools. Furthermore we will estimate the impact of segregation on the performance of students. Our research is based on a longitudinal database and aims at showing statistically the life path of poorly performing students post primary school. We shall also reveal the social causes of the high drop-out rate (at least 20%) from secondary education of this group.

5.
The value of outcomes of the Hungarian education system: a review of assessments

Leader: Benő Csapó (SZTE)
Participants: Gyöngyvér Molnár (SZTE), Éva Molnár (SZTE)

Most international assessment programs are related to curriculum-based knowledge, and focus only on one age group. Studies planned under this sub-project go further than this: they deal with the development of skills and abilities, furthermore, cover broad age-ranges. A synthesis of the results of these types of assessments, a description of the cognitive and affective outcomes of schooling in a consistent framework, finally connecting the student level and the system level analyses may be considered as a novel both in the Hungarian and in the international literature.