The short history of the school
As our town is not old, our school has not got a long history. The town was established in 1952 and the government at the time wanted it to be one of the most developed industrial settlements in the country. Earlier, there had been three villages in the area, which were put together and huge construction work began. A few years later the first part of the chemical plant and the first few blocks of flats were built and inaugurated.
In the early sixties there was a great need for a secondary school as the children living here had to travel to Miskolc to get secondary education. That is why in 1962, our school was established. In the first year it functioned as part of the Secondary Grammar School of Ózd, but a year later it gained independence.
Besides general studies, the school also provided secondary medical education in the first few years. Growing demand for more and more classes of this type meant the medical branch being separated from Ságvári Secondary School, and became Jókai Mór Secondary School, which educated children until 2011, when it was closed down.
Our school has always taken demands into account and several changes in the curriculum have been made. Till 1991 the institution had provided correspondent classes as well for those who wanted to get GCSE while working.
The curriculum of the regular education has also been developed. In the late sixties, new classes were introduced in which certain subjects were taught at a higher level and during more lessons. The subjects being taught in this form were Russian, Mathematics, Biology and Arts. Since they lost popularity in the mid eighties, the staff decided to make changes and they started a class specialized in English, which has been very popular ever since.
Electives, which were available for upper classes, were also introduced so that they could take up extra lessons in subjects such as Maths, History, Biology to prepare for the university entrance exams.
The interest in the electives had been reduced by the early nineties as people tried to find a school the classes of which were specialized in one or two subjects. As a result of this, new special classes were formed and students were given the opportunity to learn German as well. An up-to-date system of education was also started, nowadays students interested in science could choose a class where they can learn Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology during more lessons and those who like History, Literature and Grammar can choose the Class of Human Studies.
Fortunately there are more students applying for places in our school than we can accept; giving the chance to select those whose abilities are better, yet the interest in learning languages has shrunk. It has two reasons: students have realized that acquiring a foreign language is not enough, they want to learn other subjects as well, but it is vital for their future studies and jobs. The second reason is that there are schools close to us that are specialized in languages and students who want to study English or German choose those.
To make our chances better we introduced a class specialized in computer studies and English or German. Nowadays, however, the demand for German studies is very low, so at present we offer a language preparatory English class for beginner students and those who learnt English in primary school. During their first year, students concentrate on English (12 lessons / week), another langauge (German, Russian, French or Latin) (3 lessons / week), ICT and (5 lessons / week). During the next four years, they also have quite a lot of language lessons a week (9 altogether) but they also learn everything ordinary classes do.
The latest change in the curriculum was made in 2010, when the management of the school realised that classes B and C were less and less popular. In response to this, these became general classes with the opportunity to choose between IT, History or Maths that they can study four times a week. There is an opportunity not to choose any of them, either.
In Hungary education in secondary grammar schools lasts for four years , but in the early nineties experiments started to reform the system of education. One of them was the introduction of 6 year long classes in grammar school. The staff of our school worked out a special curriculum and in 1992 students in the first 6 year-long class started their secondary education. This type has been successful ever since, and the education is in very high level. The results show its success: generally over 90% of them are accepted to universities and collages.
In 2011, the Municipality of Kazincbarcika realised that its budget was not enough to run the school, so after thinking over several possible scenarios, the Salesian Order was asked to take over the institute, so from 1 September 2011, the school has been working as a Catholic Grammar School. It also has a new name: Szalézi Szt. Ferenc Gimnázium (Salesian St. Francis Secondary Grammar School.)
