1. Foreword

This study has been prepared as part of the international research project titled “The System of Shared Responsibilities Between Governmental Levels and Public Education", which has been co-ordinated and sponsored by the Economic Development Institute (EDI) of the World Bank. Besides Hungary Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Poland has taken part in the project, which has been supported by the ministry of education in each country.

In Hungary the project has been co-ordinated by the Research Centre of the National Institute of Public Education. The narrower team of experts comprises of Éva Balázs, Gábor Halász (the leader of the research project), Anna Imre, Judit Moldován and Mária Nagy. Besides the members of these team the formulation of the research conception, the preparation of the background materials and the discussion of the prepared chapters has been helped by a wider circle of counsellors in each country, whose members represent the state and social organisations that have a stake in school education and some fields outside school education. The members of this group in Hungary are: István Balázs (Prime Ministerial Office) Mrs. Péter Bencze (Ministry of Finance), Gábor Borbáth (Teachers’ Trade Union), István Borbola (Ministry of Education) Gábor Péteri (public educational expert), Zsófia Szép (Ministry of Education), László Sió (Ministry of Education).

The groups of experts in the individual countries carried out the overview of the system of shared responsibilities in their public education system with the help of a mutually developed conceptual framework. The surveying process was divided into three phases: a descriptive phase, an analysing phase and a recommendations phase. At the completion of each phase the national teams of experts compared their findings during their meetings in one of the participating countries and complemented the given phase by an on-site study in the country housing the meeting. The finished written study - reflecting the phases of the surveying process - contains three chapters. The first chapter after the Foreword introduces the basic characteristics of the system in a descriptive way. The following one analyses the problems that arise from the system of shared responsibilities in the various fields of school education. Finally, the last chapter - building on the analysis - phrases recommendations for the decision-makers of education.

The study is dealing with a field which has been under continuos changes during the previous years and where future changes are expected. This is why it is quite possible that some of the information published here becomes obsolete in a very short time and the situations described here changes considerably by that time. So we would like to emphasise that however important we find to describe and analyse our topic, it is even more important for us to introduce how the method of institutional analysis that the World Bank has developed for its development programs has been employed in our study.

The team of experts carrying out the research project express their thanks to everybody who has assisted their work.