ABSTRACT
The pressure for change, which exists in an open society, is an important force in the transformation of an education system (Fullan , 2001). The experience of the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, in which the beginnings of education reform coincided with the emergence of democratic elements, would seem to support this thesis; thus, Hungary and Poland (in the 1970s and 1980s respectively) took their fi rst steps towards the decentralization of their education systems. The reverse is also true; any closed society – once it has ‘aligned’ its educational system to its own ideological coordinates – accepts extremely few changes. In Romania , not until the dramatic and painful collapse of the Communist regime in December 1989, did the fi rst major changes in its education system take place.
