(Bratislava) – Religious or moral education may not be compulsory from the next school year in Hungary. The Human Resources Ministry’s working groups are looking into the possibility of making the class optional. The government explains the intention to make this change by the effort to ease the burden on pupils at basic and secondary schools, as cited by the portal politics.hu. A weekly compulsory class of one or two optional subjects was introduced in 2011 as part of the law on public education created under Christian-Democrat State Secretary Rózsa Hoffmann. Should it cease to be compulsory, the co-governing Christian Democrats would suffer a defeat in another significant issue after the recent repeal of the Sunday shopping restrictions. Government Office Chief János Lázár spoke about the need to change the national basic curriculum because of the deteriorating performance of pupils, and the elimination of one or two school subjects from the list of compulsory subjects might contribute to improving the situation.