Nevelésügyünk húsz éve
Twenty Years of our Education

Summary/Abstract: Transition in two steps – and its consequences. The case of Hungary. As in all East Central European countries, in Hungary too a highly-centralized educational system was prevalent until the 1970s. In contrast, Hungary now has the most decentralized system of education in the region, according to OECD data. Schools and local governments have a great deal of broad autonomy, with minimal central controls. This drastic change occurred during two, separate political idealogies and administrations in the 1980s. Solidarnost, the Polish anti-Socialist movement, had a major effect on the, then, Hungarian leadership, which followed them in wishes to establish Saturday as a day-off, which started a trend of self-regulation in policies. This reform initiative was warmly welcomed by society because it went against the existing Soviet-type communist system, with its so-called “democratic centralization”. It was seen as an attempt to reform socialism more or less in a Western way, and turn it into a Yugoslav Tito-type, self-regulated form of socialism. This pattern of change affected primary and secondary school levels and also universities; while teachers could vote for their principals and propose individual and collective schooling programs; most importantly, teachers accepted a rule that their school would exert its own controls and have its own rules. The program for establishing a school’s professional autonomy included, among other things, elimination of the inspectorate system (as this seemed to have violated teachers’ professional autonomy). Apart from in the case of schools, many plans and good ideas occurred in relation to a self-regulated local society, though what this all actually entailed became reality shortly after the collapse of the socialist regime; for 3,176 independent, local self-governments were formed after 1990 – and all of them tried to carefully preserve their sovereignty visa-vis central and regional governments. There are a number of unforeseen consequences arising from this direct democraticbased autonomy – for example, a lack of coordination, a widening gap in the performance of schools between urban and rural areas, the expansion of education and a permanent conflict between two autonomously-elected and politically-legitimized bodies, i.e. local assemblies and professional schools.

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