MET ANNOUNCEMENT – ON THE WITHDRAWAL OF THE OPERATING LICENCE FOR THE WESLEY TREASURES AND THE MÁV SITE WESLEY SCHOOL

MET ANNOUNCEMENT – ON THE WITHDRAWAL OF THE OPERATING LICENCE FOR THE WESLEY TREASURES AND THE MÁV SITE WESLEY SCHOOL

On the evening of 27 August, the Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship (HEF) was dismayed to learn of the decision of the Budapest Government Office to revoke the operating licences of the Treasures of Wesley Elementary School and High School, which were to merge in September, and the Wesley János Kindergarten, Elementary School and High School at the MÁV Site, and to remove them from the list of church and private public educational institutions.

The two schools would have been merged in a modern, larger school building, mainly for children with special educational needs and children with multiple disadvantages. The Budapest Municipality offered a vacant school in District IX for free use by the institutions. The building was in need of minor renovation, we received continuous inspections from the Government Office, the building and heritage protection authority, the public health office and the disaster management authority also thoroughly inspected every corner of the building and listed the renovation tasks to be carried out. With the help of nearly 100 volunteers of all ages and thousands of hours of hard work over the summer, all the government offices’ requests for repairs were completed.

After it became clear that the condition of the building would not allow the authorisation to be withdrawn, the Government Office took the decision, which was sent on 27 August, on the basis of financial data already available on 22 July, 5 August, 14 August and 15 August.  They did not take into account the data from the forward-looking Tax Authority hearing on 30 July, nor the fact that they found our debt settlement submissions to be of high quality and were open to further cooperation, the administrative conditions for which have since been met.

The decision, taken before the technical inspection of the building, offered schools in Szolnok, Ózd, Békéscsaba, Győr, Kecskemét, Nyíregyháza, Püspökladány, a Slovak nationality high school, bilingual institutions, among others, as alternatives to the 300 students 3 working days before the start of the school year, referring to their interests.

40% of the students at Wesley’s Treasures have special educational needs and cannot be integrated into conventional educational institutions. The children choose our institutions because they find an inclusive, non-judgemental environment, where they receive personalised development and education tailored to their abilities and challenges. The teachers’ employment contracts were automatically terminated by the decision, putting them on the street 3 days before the start of the school year.

The decision has not yet been legally delivered. After the e-mail notification was sent, staff from the Government Office personally contacted the parents of the school pupils to inform them of the decision and their obligation to enrol.

On 16 August, legal, educational and financial representatives of HEF met with the Head of the Department of the Budapest Government Office to discuss the technical and procedural conditions for obtaining the operating licence before the start of the school year. During the meeting, of which minutes were taken, there was no mention of the fact that the licence was subject to financial conditions, although HEF representatives specifically asked whether there were any other conditions that would affect the granting of the licence.

In particular, the main justification for the withdrawal of the licences, namely that the maintainer does not have the financial conditions to operate, is cynical. The HEF has received a fraction of the state’s normative subsidies this year, and in recent months the subsidies for educational and social institutions have been withdrawn in full to repay public debts, with nearly one and a half billion forints being withdrawn in 2024. And on 16 July, grant money and all reserves were withdrawn from institutional accounts and debited. For the past month and a half, only donations from citizens have covered our day-to-day operations.

In our negotiations with the Ministry of the Interior and the Tax Authority, we have previously demonstrated with technical material that we can not only run our institutions with the normative support, but also stop further debts from arising.

We have submitted our reorganisation and debt settlement plans and have declared our intention to repay our public debts. The school merger was also part of the reorganisation plans, as the merger would have allowed us to run the institutions with significantly lower overhead costs.

HEF is seeking immediate legal protection and an extraordinary procedure against the implementation of the decision, which it will submit to the authorities as soon as possible. The reception of the legal action may be delayed, so we will most likely not be able to start the school year on Monday, but once legal protection is obtained, the decision can be suspended and we can start teaching.

We have called parents together and informed them of the situation.  We will open the school from Monday and provide educational supervision for the students.

The decision of the Government Office seriously violates the educational rights of children, deprives those who cannot be integrated into the traditional school system of the chance to learn and to catch up, and most of them will most probably be excluded and drop out of the school system. The HEF has provided free meals for kindergarten and MÁV Site schoolchildren, something that the state institutions cannot provide. We also often sent home hot meals for the parents of our kindergarten children, because they could not have had access to them otherwise.

This decision could undo decades of incomplete and high-quality pedagogical work. The senseless destruction is heartbreaking, and it is incomprehensible whose interest it is to deprive vulnerable students of a safe and genuinely empowering environment and to put dedicated professionals out on the street.

It is with deep concern and shock that we send our condolences to the students, families and colleagues who have been subject to this impossible situation.

We hope that the state will choose a common solution rather than aimless destruction, and that it will not cause irreversible damage to children who are already starting out in life from a disadvantaged position. We will fight with all means at our disposal to change the situation and to represent the interests of students, parents and teachers.