Requirements concerning the management staff of schools, as well as their tasks, profession related expectations and responsibilities, are regulated by Acts. School heads have both professional and management roles. They are supported by deputy school head(s), committees and professionals, the number of whom is dependent on the size of the school. In addition to the managerial roles defined in legislation and accompanied by financial remuneration, all levels of Hungarian public education, VET and higher education have permanent or temporary management assignments or even non-formalized management roles, which considerably contributes to the effective and successful work at the institutions.

In Hungarian education system, the head of the institution is employed by the maintainer of the institution. In addition to the state and municipalities, due to the freedom of founding an institution, educational institutions may be founded and maintained by churches and foundations in public education, VET and higher education.

Since 2011, the increased central responsibility of the state in public education and VET has been characteristic.

Act CXC of 2011 on National Public Education defines the structure of the maintainers of educational institutions (§ 74 - § 76/B). From 2017, the municipalities, which had previously been mainly responsible for the maintenance of institutions, remained responsible only for kindergartens. For the other types of educational institutions, the state is the main maintainer.

The structure of institution maintenance by the state has undergone several important changes in the recent years.

The maintainer of secondary institutions performing vocational education tasks varies depending on the sector:

• The majority of secondary VET institutions were taken over into the maintenance of the Minister responsible for VET and Adult Training, and VET centres (46) were established as institution maintainers.
• Vocational schools in the health sector are run by medical universities.
• The maintainer of secondary schools providing VET in arts and pedagogy are school district centres.

Regarding other public education institutions, from 1 January 2017, the tasks of the previous state maintainer have been transferred to 60 school district centres , which are independent legal entities with their own budget. The public educational tasks performed by the church, the private sector and ethnic minority and local governments are regulated by public educational contract.

The heads of school district centres and institutions run by municipalities are public servants, their status is regulated by law. The public servant status of heads of public education institutions and school-based VET institutions run by VET centres and universities was abolished from 2020. In the case of church-run and private institutions, heads are employed under employment contracts.

In 2021, the right to maintain most public higher education institutions was transferred to foundations established by the government. With this change, the public servant status of teaching staff in institutions that went through the model change was also abolished.

The employer of the non-teaching staff working in state and local government institutions (who directly support the educational work) is the head of the institution. These positions and their formation are determined by legislation at all levels of education, and the method of filling them is typically decided by the head of the institution with the approval of the maintainer.