One hundred thousand Hungarian adults will be able to obtain training grants in IT and foreign languages. The adult education programme is targeting the unemployed, new mothers, the Roma, those living in the poorest areas and the over-45s. There has never been such a project in Hungary on this scale and with these aims.

The Office of Public Administration and Justice is co-ordinating this high profile project, which is being carried out with EU funding; it is open to those over eighteen years of age who are not involved in full-time state-financed secondary or higher education and not receiving other EU-training grants of a similar nature.

The overall project budget is more than HUF 12.5 billion, and each applicant is eligible for a gross maximum of HUF 90,000. Those living in disadvantaged micro-regions will only need to pay a 2% deposit, while for others the deposit will be 5%. In the spirit of lifelong learning, there will be no upper age limit. Over the next two years applicants will be studying in three hundred centres across the entire country. The Government sees the expansion of employment as one of its most important goals, but the expectations of the labour market must also be satisfied. The country’s competitiveness depends in part on whether its citizens have competitive skill sets. Today in Hungary approximately 85% of the adult population do not speak any foreign languages, and the figures are similar for IT skills. At the same time, nowadays there are few job advertisements which do not ask for at least a basic knowledge of a foreign language and/or IT skills.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)