ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to show how external influences and factors have brought about or are bringing about educational change. Educational responses must essentially be humanistic ones. Because societies and the educational systems which reflect these societies are not static, but are living organisms, it is how they respond to changes that is often so important and so fascinating. So much for the impact of population changes on educational provision. Schools and teachers have had to cope, adjust and respond to new and changing situations. Turning next to the socio-economic changes which have affected or are affecting educational provision, there are again three aspects mention - family and social breakdown, unemployment and community involvement. Whatever decisions are reached, education and work and unemployment are bound to be to the forefront of the educational issues facing planners and teachers throughout the 1980s. The comparative educationist is in a unique position to teach about these relations.
