Judit Kádár-Fülöp -- Tamás Káldi

Computer Supported Curriculum Management in Hungary

(Paper presented at the Dunford Seminar, Alston Hall, 23 July, 1996)

Background

Until 1989 Hungary had a highly centralized, fairly rigid education system. The

uniform 8-grade basic school was followed by three branches of secondary

programmes: the secondary grammar school (4 years), the secondary vocational

school (4 or 5 years) and the vocational school (2 or 3 years) operating in a dual

system (part-time schooling, part-time practical training at firms and institutions). All

schools were state-owned, enrollment figures and catchment areas were strictly

defined. A detailed syllabus (defining subjects, time frames, and content) for each

school type was prescribed by the Ministry of Education. On the basis of these, one

set of textbooks was developed and authorized by the Ministry of Education. Schools

worked according to the same timetable and with the same programme. The school

system was transparent in the sense that parents could be sure that their children

would get the same learning material (though not necessarily the same treatment) as

any child in the country in the same grade and school type at the same time of the

year. (If it is Tuesday, it is Belgium.)

After 1989 fundamental changes took place in education. Of these the most important

ones are as follows:

• The schools became the property of the community (usually the municipal self-

governing body). Formerly specialized secondary level schools began to offer

various secondary programmes (comprehensivization), particularly in middle size

settlements.
• The freedom of conscience and religion, the freedom to establish schools and the

freedom to choose an education was enacted as a constitutional right. Today

parents may choose the school and programme for their children as long as they

find a study place in the desired school.

• Private textbook publishers emerged and started to publish a variety of new

textbooks.

• The vocational school enrolling over 50% of the 14-old population lost the

majority of training places as the large state-owned factories went out of business.

To attract pupils vocational schools started to offer a full-time programme with

considerably more general subjects and a shorter but more intensive vocational

trainings. These days they also offer transition programmes for those who wish to

continue their studies up to the end of secondary education.

• A growing percentage of 14-year-olds have been seeking study places in secondary

schools offering longer full-time courses in order to have a better education and to

avoid unemployment.

The adaptation process was largely spontaneous on the part of the schools. Local

deviations from the uniform central curriculum segregating secondary programmes

soon became a rule rather than an exception. The tendency could be foreseen already

in the late eighties although its rapidity was unexpected even within the new political

and legal framework. To meet new needs and challenges, work on a new national

curriculum started in 1989. In line with the policy changes in most countries, the

development of the National Curriculum was based on the following assumptions:

• The community must own and take responsibility for local education.

• Instead of forced uniformity controlled and transparent diversity is desirable in

order to guarantee national standards in the education system.

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• Teachers should be invited to participate in planning but they should also take

responsibility for implementation of their curriculum.

Two-Tier Curriculum Policy

The National Curriculum was issued in November 1995 after several years of

professional and political debates. It is a frame curriculum, which describes standards

of objectives, content and desirable levels of attainment in ten study areas at 4 grade

levels (Grade 4, 6, 8, and 10). It also describes a minimum content to be taught at

these levels. (The 16+ Basic Secondary Examination and the 18+ Matura

Examination for the Secondary Education Certificate set further requirements for

planning but these are not dealt with in this paper.)

According to the Education Act of 1993 (and its Amendments of 1995 and 1996),

schools are supposed to develop their own local curricula on the basis of the National

Curriculum and teach accordingly in Grades 1 and 7 as of 1 September, 1998. The

Education Act defines a time-frame for the total amount of instruction to be given and

the National Curriculum gives guidelines as to what proportion of the time should be

devoted to each study area. However, the timetable and the school’s local curriculum

is to be designed by the school staff and it is to be approved by the local school

authority (see Table 1).

It is unlikely that many schools will embark on large scale curriculum development

work. Instead, they are expected to select from curricula developed, piloted and

improved by professional developers. In fact, curriculum work outside the National

Institute of Education (the former curriculum agency of the Ministry of Education)

started already in the 1980ies. Teacher workshops, experimental schools, universities,

colleges and recently textbook publishers have undertaken curriculum development

work in various subject areas. The National Curriculum actually sets the frame and

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standards for this activity and sets demands to adventurous developers to meet

requirements of general educational and cross-curricular goals as well as of a

minimum core content.

Although schools may select from available curricula, they are supposed to reflect on

the general goals of education within their school, consider their students’ needs,

parents’ wishes, their own resources and the budget constraints They are supposed to

work out a reasonable timetable (in compliance with the National Curriculum), and

general objectives for the subjects they teach. These should be used as selection

criteria to guide their choice of professionally developed curricula or guide their

decision to start their own planning work. According to the law they are required to

have a formally adopted written curriculum document which is submitted to and

approved by the local educational authority.

Crucial policy issues of the two-tier curriculum management

There are crucial issues in a two-tier curriculum policy that have to be addressed to

avoid shipwrecks of overzealous local curriculum reforms and resistance to change, in

other words, to avoid chaos and to avoid inertia. The Ministry of Culture and

Education has identified the following crucial issues:

• A sufficient choice of reviewed curricula is needed of which schools can edit their

local curriculum. In study areas where there are not enough NC compatible

curricula (and textbooks) development should be supported.

• An efficient curriculum and textbook information system is needed to help schools

in their planning work.

• School staff (particularly principals and heads of subject departments) need

training in how to organize their curriculum development work, how to negotiate

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 goals, how to use the curriculum information system, and how to produce their

own curriculum document.

• Local school authorities need guidance in how to evaluate local curricula.

• The implementation of the National Curriculum has to be monitored by checking

the local curricula for compliance with the goals and objectives of the NC and,

more importantly, by regular national assessments.

• An examination system is needed that reinforces the major objectives of teaching

and learning and which has a positive wash back effect on teaching methods.

The costs of implementation of the two-tier curriculum policy are formidable

compared to the centralized curriculum and textbook policy. Yet, it is seen as

unavoidable, since the old system is irreparable and anarchy would lead to low

standards.

The educational government has launched several projects in recent years to promote

change in curriculum policy. These included feasibility studies in harmonizing central

and local curriculum development in the eighties, and support of schools volunteering

to do local curriculum development. The National Curriculum development work

itself was a large scale project involving a great number of professional developers,

teachers, schools and training institutions. The debates were managed via fora around

the country, questionnaires, and opinion polls in several phases of the work.

The problem, however, is how professionally and locally produced curricula can be

produced, disseminated, and used in a systematic and coherent way? How can it be

checked whether they comply with the National Curriculum? In a sense the situation

is like that in house building versus community planning. As long as there are only a

few houses no consideration of harmonization is necessary. When it comes to larger

settlements, rules of building licencing and planning must be negotiated within the

community, since it is necessary to be able to organize communal services, e.g. roads,

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energy and water supply, etc. This requires cooperation and communication between

community planners, the general public, and building specialists (e.g. architects,

plumbers, masons, etc.). Standards of technical design and technical drawing, and the

legal standards of issuing building licences has long been accepted in community

planning.

Something analogous must emerge in the education system when schools are free to

define their goal preferences and and yet, the public good is to be observed. The

answer proposed to manage the top-down bottom-up curriculum planning and control

policy is a computer managed curriculum (and textbook) development and

information system which was developed in Hungary in a series of projects financed

by the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Education and non-governmental

organizations during the years between 1991 and 1995.

Incidentally, the difficulties of handling diversity in a principled way in curriculum

policy was recognized earlier in vocational education. As part of a project proposed

by the Ministry of Labour, which aimed at modernizing vocational secondary

education, a large number of curricula were developed between 1992 and 1994 in

Hungary. It was realized that a modular curriculum development system is needed to

produce the required variety and yet reduce the massive costs of development. It was

also recognized that editing a curriculum from modules is not a simple thing,

particularly because the whole program had to fit in with the general subjects

controlled by the National Curriculum. A computer managed system was proposed by

the consultants of the project and Mentor Informatika Ltd., a Hungarian software

house was contracted to do the development work. The result of the effort is the

Profil curriculum development and curriculum information system, which was tried

out and further developed in a series of feasibility studies and curriculum

development projects both in vocational and in general education. By 1996 the

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projects have produced a curriculum bank of about 200 curricula for various levels

and types of primary and secondary education, a textbook information system linked

to the curriculum bank, and a partner databased linked with both the curriculum and

the textbook database. The curricula included in the curriculum bank were either

existing curricula transcribed into a standard format or ones developed in the Profil

system (see below). At present, the operation and maintenance system is being

developed. About 200 teachers and teacher trainers, curriculum developers have been

trained to use the system so far. The trainees include curriculum consultants in the

National Institute of Public Education, the 20 County Pedagogical Institutes, the staff

of several teacher training colleges, and the main textbook publishers. Besides

practical training, information has been widely disseminated on the possible benefits

of using the system, books and training materials have been developed to facilitate the

use of the software and the use of the curriculum development system.

From 1996 onwards the National Institute of Public Education is in charge of the

curriculum, textbook and partners information system. Information centres have been

established in 20 county pedagogical institutes so far. 15 more service stations are

being established to offer service to schools that have not enough hardware facilities

to install the system locally. Full scale services at all service stations can be expected

by June 1997.

The Profil curriculum and textbook information system

Profil is a computer aided design and information management tool (software), which

uses project planning (task analysis) technology and a hypertext approach to construct

and handle a curriculum framework applicable to any type of education plan. It is

designed to

• describe and document curricula in a standard format,

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• store, organize and disseminate curriculum and related (e.g. textbook, equipment,

user) information,

• provide an easy way of preparing a curriculum publication from a curriculum

stored in the database, or edited from stored curricula, or developed locally,

• analyse and evaluate curricula,

• maintain and improve curricula.

The Profil curriculum and textbook information system supported by the Profil

software is a large database including the curriculum bank, a textbook database, and a

partners database (Fig. 1). All of these systems are interlocked in a highly efficient

way to facilitate data maintenance, browsing, extracting information, analysis, and

publication (Figs. 2 - 5).

The Profil software and the databases are available for schools, educational

institutions, and teacher training institutions in Hungary at the cost of reproducation

and mailing. Furthermore, the curriculum bank is open for all developers. Anybody

who wants to enter his/her curriculum in the national database is invited to do so.

However, curricula to be included have to meet professional criteria and are reviewed

first. This is done to avoid a “rubbish bin” situation.

The Profil Curriculum Framework

The Profil curriculum is a hierarchical network of modules using six levels of task

analysis and a standard module description format. The modules are conceived of as

planning units (or task elements) of different sizes. In the Profil framework the

curriculum is put together from (or can be broken down into) the following standard

task levels or modul types:

• curriculum (a whole period of training in all subjects or in one subject)

• grade (level) comprising all subject courses within one grade

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• subject (one grade level in one subject)

• topic (a larger unit within a subject)

• subtopic (a smaller unit within a topic)

• lesson.

Module types for assessment can be defined in a similar way. E.g. an examination can

be broken down into modules like written/oral/practical examination (parts) and

these, in turn, into tests, subtests and items (tasks). Thus the system can be used for

item banking as well.

Both curriculum modules and assessment modules can be linked with textbooks, and

equipment to be used, and schools or jobs (job families) where they are relevant. The

information on these is also stored in a standard and easy-to-access format (Fig.6.)

The modules are connected to form a hierarchical network that represents the

relationships of tasks both in a log-frame (summative vs elementary tasks, and

parallel vs sequential tasks) and in a real-time frame. The hierarchical system of study

modules and the possible links are shown in Fig.7.

Each module has the same structure, i.e. invites the writer to provide information on

goals, objectives, content and method (activities), prerequisites, assessment, cross-

curricular connections, and resources (see Fig.8. and Table 2.)

Identifiers ensure that each module has a unique name, and a unique location within

the system, and its links are established with other modules.

Most of the information is described as free text (e.g. the description of goals,

objectives, assessment, content are described as “columns” in a newspaper). Pointers

and identifiers, however, that link columns and modules with each other are entered

as pre-formatted data.

Thus a hypertext is created, which can be read in various ways. The system allows the

curriculum writer to edit information on various aspects of the curriculum in an

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efficient way, and to develop a curriculum to any detail (even including lesson plans)

without obliging the reader to read it all. It is possible to navigate up and down in the

module hierarchy, between modules of the same type, and within the module between

columns (to read the goals, the objectives, etc.) (Fig.9.). As a secondary navigation

mode, one can look up connections to prerequisites, connections to assessment

modules, cross-curricular relationships, links with resources (equipment, textbooks),

links with partners (schools, publishers, etc.).

The Profil curriculum has a structure that allows the reader to view the “macro

structure” of the curriculum by looking at the network of modules only (Fig.10.) This

structure or task map can be built before detailed planning starts and it can also be

displayed as a PERT chart once the curriculum is developed. Similarly, the fully

developed local curriculum may be used to plan the school year. The data on

resources (i.e. time, human resources, classrooms, labs, etc.) are fed by Profil into the

project planning software Windows Project. A wide range of uses in school

administration are

The Profil software

The Profil software package is a Windows based software design tool, which handles

the curriculum database and directs and coordinates other Windows tools for editing,

printing, and analysing curricula (Fig. 11).

In the recent years of curriculum “banking”, the most common use of Profil has been

browsing in the curriculum database and curriculum writing, editing and printing.

When a curriculum is put together from the curriculum bank, a unique module

structure is built and ready-made elements from the curriculum bank are included in

it. Once that is done, the whole curriculum is formatted by the software and it can be

printed out and stored as a Word document (Fig.12.).

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The Profil software (co-operating with Windows-Excel and Windows-Project)

provides tools for curriculum analysis and evaluation. This will become important

when the local curricula have to be reviewed, approved, implemented, and improved.

For example, one can check the internal consistency of a curriculum, i.e. the

compatibility of a module with respect to others. For example, if the study of a

module is a prerequisite or entry condition of studying another module, the tools for

curriculum analysis can check whether these conditions are met in planning. It is also

possible to map subjects and topics to see what topics are to be taught simultaneously

(cross-curricular coordination). After the present development phase it will be

possible to check whether a local curriculum covers all the key objectives of the

National Curriculum. It is also possible to check the local set of subject curricula with

respect to time constraints. Curriculum evaluation is made easy through the analytic

approach of the standard module description format as well. By using the hypertext

navigation and printing facilities, it is possible to compare long-term and short-term

goals, purposes, proposed assessment methods, content and proposed methods.

Computer supported curriculum management as a development

strategy

There is strategic thinking behind the decision to rely upon computers in curriculum

management. Hungary was in a unique situation with respect to curriculum changes

and policy changes. The old system collapsed before a pressure group became strong

enough to save it. Therefore a new system had to be made workable in a very short

time. At the same time, a system was needed that could help the adaptation of the

education system both with respect to present and future changes. New content and

new methods are developed to meet challenges and new needs in education. These

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cannot be “introduced” on a large basis. But easy-to-access information on innovative

curricula and learning materials may enhance benefits gained from innovation.

The introduction of computer technology at every level of education is a policy

priority from other points as well. In an information society teachers must be efficient

users and developers of information systems. Yet, most of them are not even

computer users these days! Teachers’ resistance to technology is a well-known

phenomenon. Most of the time this is not because teachers refuse to be ‘progressive’.

The case is often reverse: the educational use of a new product is often a secondary

marketing exercise on the part of the producer. Also, schools are slow buyers because

they spend taxpayers’ money. Often the products getting to schools are outdated

before they are bought, or get very quickly outdated because technological progress is

too fast. Hardly any tools have ever been designed for the school teacher as a primary

user except for textbooks and teaching aids. A planning, sorting and publishing

software made for teachers might well become a basic tool of new professionalism in

education and instruction just as writing was at the dawn of the history of institutional

education.

Planning and the managemnent of group learning are professional tasks where

appropriate programme packages are seen by teachers as a real support rather than a

fancy new technical gadget that requires a lot of their time. It has been found during

the projects that teachers become highly motivated and successful computer users if

they see their work made easier by the computer.

Planning with the computer has proved to have another important side-effect on

teachers. Teachers who developed their curricula reported in our projects that the

computer generated Profil curriculum framework made them reflect on their teaching

and planning practices and they actually managed to produce a better curriculum

description than they themselves had expected. Because of the structured and

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principled framework offered by the Profil system, and because of the ease of

analysing their drafts and improving and editing their curricula, they felt intrigued

and obliged to come up with what they thought was ‘their best practice’. They

compared their work with other teachers’ similar products and realized that they had a

lot to learn from each other both in methodology and in expression in a professional

way.

Beside immediate curriculum reform needs, the strategic goal of introducing Profil as

a standard planning tool, therefore, is twofold:

• to raise teachers’ awareness of the need to develop their planning skills and

actually help them in it, and

• to raise the standards of computer literacy in the teaching profession and help

teachers to acquire computer literacy skills within a professionally relevant

context.

The main concern is, of course, how the new curriculum policy will affect teaching

practices and the standards of schooling. This is a question difficult to answer.

Educational policy is only one factor in bringing about change in education.

Education is also affected by economy, by perceived perspectives, by the willingness

of people and society to change through education. We believe, however, that local

planning contributes to the development of participatory techniques and cooperation

between teachers, which, in the long run, may strengthen cohesive forces within the

school and in its social environment, and raise professional skills among teachers.

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References

Báthory Zoltán (1995), Hungary: System of Education. In: Husén, Torsten., T.Neville

Postlethwaite (Eds), The International Encyclopedia of Education Vol.5.

Oxford, Pergamon pp. 2697 - 2706.

Act LXXIX of 1993 on Publich Education of the Hungarian Republic. (Passed by

Parliament on July 12, 1993.

Review of National Policies for Education. Hungary. Paris, OECD 1993.

Káldi Tamás, Kádárné Fülöp Judit (1996), Tantervezés (Curriculum planning).

Budapest, Iskolaszolga.

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Tables

Table 1 Allocation of responsibilities concerning curriculum decisions in Hungary

Table 2 Description of a curriculum module in the Profil framework

Figures

Figure 1 The curriculum database

Figure 2 Textbook data in the Profil database

Figure 3 Partners data in the Profil database

Figure 4 The structure of the Profil curriculum and textbook information system

Figure 5 Connected data to a book edition

Figure 6 Module types in the Profil curriculum and textbook information

system

Figure 7 Relationships and connections between modules and other units

Figure 8 “Columns” in a study module

Figure 9 Primary navigation between and within curriculum modules

Figure 10 Module structure of a local curriculum

Figure 11 How does the Profil software work?

Figure 12 Content of a computer generated curriculum publication

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