School closures in rural Hungary

Schools play important role in the sustainability of rural communities, since they provide basic education and economic opportunities in rural areas. Moreover, schools are often the social hubs of the villages and serve as cultural centres, too. Therefore, this study is going to show the benefits and the negative effects of school closures in rural Hungary. The main goal of this paper is to identify the community-level characteristics associated with the presence or absence of a school. In the summer of 2015 territorial databases of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office were studied. Village-level demographic, social and economic indicators were analysed and it was found that the better socio-economic situation of villages with school was not clear. The authors established that the villages with schools had better demographic performance, partly better living and infrastructural conditions, but the employment and the welfare characteristics were worse, compared to those without schools.


Introduction
Schools are vital to rural communities, since they can provide many social, economic and other functions.First of all, school is an educational institute.Secondly, it can provide economic and social opportunities.Thirdly, it can be an arena for local politics.Moreover, it can become a delivery point for services and a resource for community development.Lyson (2002) agrees with the above-mentioned functions of schools in rural communities, and he draws our attention to their social and cultural roles.Since the school can be not only the social hub of the village, but also contributes to the cultural development of the community.So the schools serve as social and cultural centres, too (Lyson, 2002).According to Witten et al. (2001) schools can serve as catalysts for community participation, social cohesion and the vitality of neighbourhoods.
The next figure and tables show the proportion of Hungarian settlements which don't have primary schools or upper (5)(6)(7)(8) classes.In 2012, 42 % of the settlements didn't have primary schools, and in every second settlement missed the upper classes.As it is demonstrated, there was a decreasing tendency in terms of settlements having primary school.In years 2006-2007 significant number of settlements lost primary education facilities.It happened basically due to the minimum headcount requirements for schools as it was regulated by the new Public Education Act.In that villages lived 5 % of 6-13 year old pupils in 2012.Further 2,5 % of pupils lived in villages, where only 1-4 classes existed (Varga, 2015).
School closure in rural communities is not only a Hungarian, but a worldwide known problem.
According to MacDonald (2003) each community feels the loss of its local school.Negative effect of the school consolidation is that it can cause divisions within and between rural communities, especially when there is competition between schools for pupils.Disadvantageous economic impacts are also important.On the one hand, parents may be more likely to spend money locally if their children study in a local school; on the other hand, closing the school is hardly to explain economically.Hungarian studies proved, that the per capita costs of small schools are quite high under 100 pupils, but above 200 pupils it is hardly to reduce that.Beside that there is no evidence, that there is significant difference between the efficiency of the smaller and bigger schools.The differences can be traced back on the differences of the educational level of the parents (Bódi & Fekete, 2011).Poverty is connected to the problems of education system.
MacDonald (2003) examined the impacts of school closure in rural Nova Scotian communities.She concluded that school closures, most teachers lived in the same community they taught in.Therefore, parents knew those people who worked at the school and this helped to make the school more accessible to the community.However, after school consolidation parents felt somewhat alienated by the size of the new schools, by the unknown staff and in some cases, by the very distance to the school.school.Many highly ranked teachers left the schools and were often replaced by under-qualified beginners.Lyson (2002) summarizes in his study why it is necessary to document and quantify what a school means to small rural villages.This paper draws the attention of policymakers, educational administrators and local citizen focus on the importance of schools to the appropriate operation of rural communities.It is established that the presence of a school in small villages is associated with many social and economic benefits, like higher housing values, more developed municipal infrastructure and so on.Therefore, the author concludes that the gain of a school consolidation can be lost in decreasing taxes, declining property values and lost business (Lyson, 2002).
Autti and Hyry-Beihammer (2014) examined school closures in Finland, focusing on the social role of small village schools.The number of school closures has remained high since 1992, and the number of small schools has decreased significantly.Their interviews illustrated that local residents were unanimous about the significance of village schools.A safe, small school is fundamental to a pleasant community.The school is more than just a place to educate children; it influences the community's well-being.In addition to building human and cultural capital, schools build and maintain social capital.Schools in rural areas are centres of village social life and have a crucial role in constructing a local identity (Autti & Hyry-Beihammer, 2014).
Howley et al. ( 2011) stated that in order to increase the fiscal efficiency and educational quality in many large schools, places instead of consolidation, deconsolidation could be a better solution.They established that the academic and social performance of too large schools was decreasing.They claimed that the benefits of school and district consolidation were overestimated.They went ever further and highlighted smaller schools and districts could suffer irreversible damage in case of consolidation.On the other hand, they also remind us that the benefits of deconsolidation should be judged only on a case-by-case basis (Howley et al., 2011).

Data and Methods
The objective of this paper is to identify the community-level characteristics associated with the presence or absence of a school.With the help of different socio-economic indicators the effects and causes of school closures on rural settlements were analysed in this study.
First, an extended literature review was done concerning the impacts of school closure on rural communities in the summer of 2015.Then, it was necessary to determine what the term 'rural' means in our research.The definition of Hungarian Rural Development Program for rural areas was followed in the research.According to this document, those Hungarian settlements are considered as rural where the population density does not exceed 120 persons/km 2 and has less than 10,000 inhabitants.2,766 Hungarian villages (88% of the settlements) met these requirements.
Then, a territorial database was created from the data of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office.However, only those rural villages were chosen for the analysis, where the population number was less than 2,000, because above that number of inhabitants, schools exist.Therefore, it was decided to focus on that size of settlements.After that, two subsets of data were created to avoid the influence of the population size on the research findings.The first one contained the very small rural villages having population of 500 or fewer, the second one included small and medium-sized villages with population between 501 and 2,000.In 2013 1,062 villages (34% of the settlements) had 500 or fewer inhabitants and 1,233 villages (39% of the settlements) had a population between 501 and 2,000. http://dx.doi.org/10.15414/isd2016.s7.06 Demographic, employment, welfare, housing and infrastructure indicators were selected for the analysis.Secondary data for the analysis were mainly obtained from censuses and some other territorial databases.The data processing was made by using statistical methods, applying Excel and SPSS programs.

Social circumstances of school closures in Hungary
Despite differences in size and the presence or absence of a school, the demographic characteristics of the Hungarian rural villages concerned are quite similar (Table 2).For instance, the age structure and the school qualification are almost the same in very small and medium-sized villages.The research proved that the absence of schools is more typical in very small-sized villages than in medium-sized ones.It can be seen in Table 2, too, that the average population number was much larger in those villages where at least one school operated in 2013.Most examined Hungarian villages experienced decline in population in the last two decades.The average net migration rate was negative in each type of settlements, so more people moved out of the villages than moved in.However, it can be stated that in case of villages with schools had more favourable values than settlements without a school.The situation was the same in case of natural decrease and age profile of the population as well.The proportions of children and young adults were higher and the proportion of middle-aged and pensioners were smaller in communities with schools.The ageing index was also unfavourable in each type of settlements, but it can be stated that the worst values have the small villages without schools.It turned out that the fertility rates and so the proportions of families with children were higher in settlements with schools (Table 2).
The research outcomes regarding school qualification of the population were ambiguous.The proportion of those who did not finish primary school was higher, while the proportion of people having secondary school certificate was smaller in villages with schools.The ratio of graduated was higher in very small villages with schools, while it was smaller in small and medium-sized villages.The ratios were just converse in case of primary school leavers (Table 2).

Economic circumstances of school closures in Hungary
The examinations revealed that the presence of school was associated with appreciably smaller proportion of employed and inactive earner and higher ratios of unemployed and dependent compared to similar sized communities without a school (Table 3).It was shown that proportion of workers who commute was much larger in villages without a school.Probably as a consequence of higher proportion of employed, the income per capita from wages and other sources was also higher in settlements without a school.In contrast, the income from regular social assistance was higher in communities with schools.In accordance with this tendency, the average number of people receiving regular social assistance was much higher in such villages (Table 3.).
As it was expected, the housing stock in rural communities with schools was somewhat newer and in line with this fact the proportion of houses with all modern conveniences was higher than in those without schools (Table 4).However, the research findings concerning the infrastructure were different what had been expected.The examinations proved that rural villages without schools were somewhat more likely to have municipal water system and sewer system than those without schools.So according to the results with the exception of houses the physical infrastructure is more developed in communities without schools than those that have schools (Table 4).
Balázsi and Bódi (2011) examined whether there was no demonstrable link between the school closures and the physical characteristics of the schools.In the environment of consolidated schools there were another school, which was available for the parents.There was no significant correlation between the infrastructural condition (location inside of the settlement, the condition of the school building) and the evidence of school closure.Larger communities took much likely into consideration the socio-cultural background of the families concerned.On the settlements where schools were closed, the social background of pupils was unfavourable and the efficiency of the school was lower.

Conclusion
The decline of birth rates has contributed to the consolidation of schools in Hungary.Besides, the enforcement of the new Education Act speeded up closing rural schools.
Rural school closures usually affected negatively the villages.Rural places have more chance to become isolated and lose local identity and the ability of future development activities due to closing the local school.
There was a goal to identify the community-level characteristics associated with the presence or absence of a school.With the help of different socio-economic indicators the effects or causes of school closures on rural settlements were analysed.It can be however concluded that in case of Hungary the better socio-economic situation of villages with school is not clear.The villages with schools have better demographic performance, partly better living and infrastructural conditions, but the employment and the welfare characteristics are worse, compared to those without schools.Further researches are needed to find an explanation for these findings.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Proportion of settlements without primary school in Hungary (%)

Table 1 : Proportion of villages without schools in 2013 (%) population 500 or under (%) population between 501
-1,000 (%) Total population (%) Source: own edition based on the data of Hungarian Central Statistical Office, 2013

Table 2 : Population characteristics of the examined Hungarian villages
Source: own calculation and edition based on HCSO Census, 2011 and HCSO TSTAR, 2013