The Belvárosi Tanoda highschool, located in Budapest, is a privately funded institution which has been educating special needs students since 1990, providing programs for youngsters with learning disabilities, drug problems, difficult social background, and lately more and more unmotivated, bored young people with no resolution and /or prospects for the future.

The Belvárosi Tanoda highschool is a tuition-free institution which provides special education services to students aged 16 and over. It considers as its main professional task the personality-centered care and approach in teaching; and giving an aid in solving life problems, finishing high school and taking the final exams. Our students are drop-outs from the traditional school system due to behavior problems and learning difficulties caused by their environment both at school and home.

Acceptance to the school is based on an individual assessment of the students needs and motivation.  The Belvárosi Tanoda highschool has a maximum enrollment limit of 100 students per year. Because of the severity of many of the students’ learning handicaps, the enrollment limit is necessary to insure that each student receives the focused, in-depth attention that he or she requires.

The highschool employs a staff of 15 teachers and a special education teacher who teach math, science, art, literature, history, German, French and English in small group classes or on a one-to-one basis. Components of the individual learning program: individual-centered teaching, individual progress pace, agreement system, exam system, course method and the final exam adjusted to the progress pace.

In addition, every student must choose one teacher to serve as a mentor. The mentor supervises the students’ academic program, acts as a liason between the student and the staff of teachers, occasionally keeps contact with the family and provides the student with extra counseling and training to solve any social or performance problems that arise. The tasks as a teacher and as a mentor are not separated, every time when the employees of the Tanoda are together with the students is an essential part of the helping work. Teaching itself is also defined as helping work. The most important area of the helping work is being together daily, the school-life where in a natural setting, individual attention and care is realised spontaneously. This is the best way to get to know each other since the students and their helpers meet and cooperate in many different situations (teaching-learning, personal discussions with the helping pair, chatting in the breaks, spontaneous group- or personal discussions, drinking coffee, tea, free-time activities, sports, excursions, etc.).

The school has two goals.  The first, and primary goal is to ensure a safe, accepting environment for the students who falied in the mainstream school system and thus became unmotivated for learning and developed poor self-esteem. It also serves as a ground for recovery from drug abuse.  This goal includes providing a rich social climate and various possibilities for learning appropriate social roles, and offering a chance to achieve the skills and education level necessary to pass the central highschool final exam. Creating a pleasant athmosphere at school is considered very important and we lay emphasis on doing various activities together with the students.