Educator ESD competences in the quality assessment system of educators

An amendment to the Government Decree 326/2013. (VIII. 30.)  in force from 2018 includes ESD competences in the competence portfolio of teachers. This means that for teachers’ qualification and advancement processes, their ESD competences need to be proven with evidences from their daily work.

This element of the national competence framework was developed using the research results of a European project based on the UNESCO Learning for the Future Competence Framework, involving a mixed group of experts (consisting of teacher educators, educational researchers, qualification experts, heads of institutions and practicing teachers). Through the work of the multi-stakeholder expert group, ESD competences were integrated into teacher trainings and teachers’ assessment processes, while the necessary tools, guidelines and recommendations were developed. Thus, the various professionals working in the public education system (early childhood educators, teachers of different disciplines, developmental educators, special education teachers, psychologists, school leaders, etc.) could be prepared on the basis of 31 different guidelines according to their field of expertise.

Over the past two years, the Ministry of Human Capacities and the Educational Authority have reached around 18,000 teachers through trainings, briefings and presentations. The multiplicator trainings of Pedagogical Training Centre staff have also started and the Ministry of Hunan Capacities initiated strengthening the professional networks at both regional and national levels. In addition, the Educational Authority of Hungary organized briefings on ESD for all school leaders in the country, and in the academic year of 2019/2020, in the traditional series of professional learning events called Autumn Pedagogical Days, each Pedagogical Education Centre in the country organized professional programs on ESD. The programs had a participatory approach: with the help of workshops, good practice exchanges and open sessions, hundreds of teachers were reached in each region. From 2020, teachers’ preparation was also supported by a multi-stage, free online mini-course system developed by the Educational Authority of Hungary. These training programs strengthening ESD competences contributed to the successful qualification of 15,000 teachers in this competence area in 2020/2021.

The following steps helped to integrate ESD into the pre-service teacher training curricula and assessment criteria. The review of the teacher training programs and output requirements began in 2020 with the involvement of every higher education institution involved in teacher education. ESD competences got included in the training curricula and in the output requirements: it is gratifying to experience that there was a consensus among delegates from higher education institutions on the importance of these steps.

With this, Hungary has implemented a forward-looking practice that also serves as a special and exemplary initiative in the European Union. As a result, educator ESD competences became part of the e-portfolios of all school educators, school leaders and teaching staff and appear as an element of the training programme and the output criteria of pre-service teachers.

The initiative of developing teachers’ ESD competences in Hungary received the GENE Certificate Exemplifying Quality in Global Education in 2021.