The Round Table for Education and Child Opportunities has proposed a number

of programmes that require resources for their funding. There are ways to make some savings in the Hungarian public education system, which can be used for this purpose. Public education is burdened with serious problems of efficiency, productivity and equity. There are more teachers to each pupil than in most European countries (in Hungary the number of pupils per teacher is lower in both primary and secondary education than the European average) however, as shown by the results of the PISA surveys (2000, 2003, 2006), in terms of pupils ’ reading comprehension and mathematical skills Hungary ranks lower than some countries with higher pupil to teacher ratios. Efficiency problems are therefore primarily manifest in that education continues to display moderate effectiveness while the pupil to teacher ratio declines. What this means is that the increase in expenditure is not accompa-nied by an improvement in education quality, i.e., the system is wasteful. It seems, then, that the public education system offers opportunities to save costs and the demographic change predicted for the next few years may fre