Petőfi Sándor Primary School

6600,Szentes, Petőfi u. 15. sz.
', 7: 06 63/562–130
www.szentesinfo.hu/petofi
E-mail: petisi@freemail.hu
Director: Mészáros László

Approaching the city centre from Hódmezővásárhely a huge oak tree and a two-storied building can be seen where the road branches off. On the left there are primary and secondary schools, therefore this street was named after the patrol saint of students, Szent Imre .The street on the right goes to the centre and was named after the great Hungarian poet, Petőfi Sándor so our school has also got his name: Petőfi Sándor Primary School.

Our institute is the one with the longest history among the schools of the city. Education started here more than 130 years ago on 7 February, 1871.

Handwork, foreign languages, dancing, music and religious education were of great importance.

Because of the increasing number of pupils a new building was in use after 1. September, 1913. The building had 6 classrooms, a gym, rooms for music and workshop, a library, offices, 2 equipment stores, an official residence and all the required equipments. The period of education with "ideal" circumstances was one year, because of the WW I. Between the two World Wars a hospital was arranged in the building, but the education went on in the neighbouring schools.

After the war the institute moved back to the original building. In 1947 the school pioneer troop (separated for boys and girls) was formed. In 1949 the institute was called "Petőfi Utcai Általános Iskola"

The emblem of the school was made by István Drahos (Ex-libris artist) at the beginning of the 60's. It symbolizes what the school offers to the pupils.

The treble refers to the higher level of music education, the owl is the symbol of the knowledge available for everyone.

Music and the other arts (literature, fine arts, dancing) have a positive effect on everyday work. Due to this fact, too, our pupils are succesful at competitions in thcity, in the county and in the whole country, too.

Besides the lessons there are study circles (for choirs, foreign languages, maths, mother language, fine art, health education, nature protecting, computer, workshop, sport...etc.) which can be chosen by pupils.

In our school it is both important to improve children’s talents and to care those ones who lag behind. Study circles and coaching are available for everybody. In our school there are two parallel classes in every year. In one there is special music teaching, in the other children learn by general curriculum. Foreign language teaching and computer science have also been developing more and more important. Currently children can learn a foreign language from the first year. The library of our school helps children learn and find a good free time activity. Children in the junior section regularly go swimming to the nearby swimming pool, while the senior section goes to the sports field. In the fields of sport we have excellent success in judo. Besides there is folk dance, standard and Latin dance and aerobic teaching in the lessons.

We have good connections with several cultural institutes such as the local Koszta József Museum, the Town Library, the Children’s Library, the Tóth József Theatre Hall, the Gallery and the Péter-Pál Town House.

Traditions such as Christmas, the carnival in February, Challenge Day and Mothers’ Day play a great part in the life of our school. It has been a nice custom for our choirs to have a Christmas concert in St Anne Church in Szentes. Moreover we finish school year with a concert at the end of May and we organize several kinds of town and county competitions in poetry recitation, nice Hungarian pronunciation and so on and we have a dance performance every year, too.

The choirs of our school have taken part in several recordings. Besides performances in Hungary they have been abroad in Slovenia and Germany, in Celje, Bückeburg, Sankt Augustine, Wolfennbüttel. They regularly take part in competitions every year from which they usually come home with gold medals. The ‘big choir’ of our school gained the prize of ‘The Choir of the Year’ in 1995. Our foreign connections have been extended with Transylvanian schools and Hungarian ones in Yugoslavia. With these partner schools we have common cultural, educational programmes and school exchange journeys. Japanese teachers have visited our school several times to see the art education in our lessons.

After school students can have lunch in the school canteen, afterwards they can either study at home or at school. Teachers and parents can talk about the progress of the children on special meetings with the form teacher and other teachers. In addition they can also visit the ‘open lessons’ and other school programs.

We have connected first of the schools of Szentes to the Comenius 2000 Educational Quality Improving Programme. The programme has been extended since then and in Comenius Club we cooperate with kindergarteners and high school teachers. We would like to follow our school leavers with attention at high schools, too and to take the adaptation of them easier there. Therefore we are taking part in the HU 008-02 Phare Programme in the consortium of Boros Sámuel Technical High School for the ‘adequate educational and pedagogical care of children’.

Our school has been developing and renewing from time to time. Our aim is to create a school that has traditions and stands all demands and challenges of future. We believe in the good influences of art for the characters of children, however we insist on the importance of practical knowledge, too (information science, computer studies, foreign language teaching).We try to supply children with sensible free time activities to make them feel why it is good to be the member of Petőfi School.