From the very beginning, the Catholic Church has been involved in the education and upbringing of young people. For centuries, this activity has been closely tied to teachers in Catholic schools writing and compiling curricula and later textbooks for each subject. Communism interrupted this historical development in Hungary. After the change of regime, pupils were again able to study from Church textbooks in religious education classes, but following a 76-year break, they had to wait until 2021 to be able to choose a Catholic textbook family for general subjects as well.
The Saint Emeric textbook family was commissioned by the Hungarian Catholic Bishops’ Conference (HCBC), under the supervision of the Catholic Pedagogical Institute, for grades 9-12.
The textbooks published for the subjects of history, Hungarian literature and grammar, together with the corresponding text compilations, are published by the Saint Stephen Association for pupils studying in secondary schools, vocational secondary schools or technical schools. The textbooks can be ordered by any institution and are available free of charge through the Registry of Textbooks 2022, via KELLO. These textbooks will not be mandatory to use in Catholic educational institutions either.
In 2021, 40 000 copies of the newly introduced textbooks for grades 9-10 were ordered. This school year, the number of pupils learning from them every day increased to 100 000.
In parallel with the publication of the textbooks, the Digital Catholic Learning Resource Repository (www.kattan.hu) was launched in autumn 2021. The continuously developing portal provides access to smart versions of textbooks, as well as teaching aids, Catholic religious education textbooks and a digital classroom for teachers and pupils. So far, close to 200 schools have registered for the platform.