From the 2026 budget audit
The central office that manages a centralised system should shrink as the system is decentralised.
NSZFH's 2.6 milliárd Ft budget is sized to administer vocational training from the centre — as governance moves to schools and employers, the central office's purpose shrinks with it.
Roughly 651 Ft per taxpayer per year — 2.6 milliárd Ft for a coordination office whose coordinating remit is actively being reduced by the same reform package.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: a central body accrediting, examining, and recording vocational qualifications. The unseen: the decentralised school-level governance that is forestalled for as long as a large central office remains resourced to do what schools and employers could do locally.
Objection
"Without a national office, vocational qualifications won't be comparable across the country."
Answer
A national qualifications register and comparability standard is a genuine residual function — and it is a fraction of the current 2.6 milliárd Ft envelope. Phase the office down to that residual over the same four years the vocational-centre devolution is implemented; the certificate still means what it says, but the bureaucracy that administers it is sized to the function.
Share if you think a central bureaucracy should shrink when it devolves its own work.
The analyst's verdict
National Office for Vocational and Adult Education
Rationale
The NSZFH is the central administrative office of the vocational-training system — accreditation, examination standards, register-keeping, methodology. Its scale is a function of the centralised, state-run vocational architecture it administers. If the vocational training centres below are devolved toward employer- and school-level governance — the reform direction the Szakképzési Centrumok line argues for — the central office's coordinating remit shrinks with it. This is the An oversight office whose remit is proportional to the centralised system it administers is partly evidence of that centralisation rather than an independent good. The genuine residual — a national qualifications register and a comparability standard so that a vocational certificate means the same thing across the country — is real and defensible, but it is a fraction of the current envelope. Phase the office down to that residual over the period in which the vocational-centre devolution is implemented.
Transition mechanism
Linear four-year reduction tracking the vocational-centre devolution; retain a small qualifications-standards and register unit; the personnel component (1,657.8 millió Ft) is the protected payroll, and the office's staff hold administrative skills transferable within the wider education system. Year-1 net saving of 650.8 millió Ft rising to the full 2,603.2 millió Ft by year 4, with a residual standards unit re-provisioned separately if the register function justifies it.
Affected groups
NSZFH staff (a cohort whose accreditation and methodology skills transfer to the devolved school-level bodies); the vocational-training system, which retains its qualifications-comparability standard.
Free Society Institute
Support independent analysis
Our research is free, open, and unsponsored. If you find it valuable, help us keep it that way.