HUNGARY: Order, work and fulfilling duties

Reducing bureaucracy was an election promise of the right-wing conservative party Fidesz, the Alliance of Young Democrats, which replaced the Socialists as Hungary's new government on 29 May. The first step of this reform was a cut in the number of ministries from 12 to eight, merging the formerly autonomous Ministry of Education into a new Ministry of National Resources.

This super-ministry will deal with health, culture, science, families, pension policy, safeguarding young people and equal opportunities. Each key field has a state secretary, making a total of seven ministers without portfolio whose work will be coordinated by Miklós Réthelyi (pictured), Minister of National Resources.

Réthelyi is a 70-year-old anatomy professor with decades of teaching experience. From 1991 to 1995 he was the dean of the leading SOTE Medical University of Budapest where he also directed the doctoral school of neurosurgery from 2000.

After taking up his latest appointment, Réthelyi declared he saw educational reform as a high priority and this issue is expected to play a central role in his leadership.

His main task is to balance and coordinate the work of the seven state secretaries. The education sector is also in experienced hands, those of Rózsa Hoffmann who became Minister for Education from 2 June and is an ambitious woman who has already drafted some radical changes.

Hoffmann said: "There's going to be order, work and fulfilling duties but also positivity and recognition of achievement."

She was born in 1948 and gained a degree in Russian and French linguistics in 1971. Her spiritual home is the Catholic Democratic People's Party, Fidesz' coalition partner.

According to her official website, Hoffmann always wanted to work in education. In the 1970s she joined the Hungarian Socialist Labour Party and worked in the Ministry of Education, which she now claims to regret, commenting:

"I had to make ends meet somehow and back then, in my position, that job offer was a real lifesaver. I was very young, and my political and ideological views were immature. Today I look back on who I was with a nostalgic smile."

After her administrative post at the Ministry of Education she was offered a job as headmistress of a Budapest high school then worked in positions of increasing authority in the education sector, taking a leading role in reforming the secondary school graduation system and serving as a committee member at the National Textbook Publishing Company.

Today, she apparently rejects her earlier decisions. Her first act as state secretary was to present plans to parliament for a new education law aiming to overhaul the secondary school graduation system and remedy the failure of elementary schools.

Her right-hand-man Zoltán Pokorny recently announced the ministry wanted to make universities reject students with lower-level secondary school grades. If accepted, this reform would affect students leaving secondary school from 2013.

The new team also hopes to reintroduce university admission interviews which were abolished in 2005. This could filter out inadequate students but would mean a heavy workload for universities because of the high number of applicants.

First reactions to the planned changes have been predominantly negative. Tamás Mészáros, Rector of Budapest Corvinus University, said: "It was a relief when they abolished the interviews. We had to organise 40-50 panels per day and we never had enough professors for that."

Other critics have suggested a sinister ulterior motive, claiming that a 15-minute interview could only provide information on candidates' racial, religious and political backgrounds and convictions.

* Anna Csonka is a correspondent with ESNA , the Berlin-based European Higher Education News Agency.