Session Information
04 SES 12 B, The Rural-Urban Dimension in IE
Paper Session
Contribution
The rural-urban dimension of processes of social stratification has always been particularly significant in Central and Eastern Europe. Pre-communist and communist legacies are all visible cross-regionally as internal development patterns inside these countries. In post-communism, in spite of some development policies and programs, new economic, administrative, financial and educational restructuring through decentralisation mainly contributed to maintain and produce new stratification effects.
In continuation of previous comparative research on the Hungarian, Polish and Romanian education (Mincu, 2009), the current overview of the rural education is guided by the following research questions:
- how relevant is the rural issue for the political agenda
- how the rural is tackled in different contexts
- which are the most important factors that influence upon the quality and equity of rural education.
The improvement of education quality in rural areas is essentially intertwined with the issues of access and equity. In addition, national definitions of what counts as quality and equity in education in a specific country and moment in time and their relation to the “rural question” has to be carefully considered. For instance, in some countries rurality as contextual dimension may be plainly evident in relevant policy documents such as the annual reports on the state of education (e.g., the Romanian case). In other contexts, e.g. the Hungarian case, rurality may remain a background issue and become substituted by other concepts, such as “small village schools in small settlements” and the problem of the rural poor fully coinciding with other specific categories, highly relevant though they may be (e.g. Roma population and students).
One of the most important issue and main topic in my analysis is the impact of decentralisation of education finance on rural education, which implied insufficient funding and a relevant trend of reorganisation of the school network. In my overview I focus on:
- the case of rural gminas in Poland;
- the Hungarian solutions to creating cooperative networks of local governments (MALGOs)
- the fragmentation and dysfunctions in rural schools finance in Romania.
Education quality in rural areas is also a matter of available pathways for academic vs. technical and vocational courses, school choice policy, distances to school, and school attainment.
Inter and intra-regional disparities have widened in all these countries and rural poverty continues to be a highly relevant issue which is not always sufficiently acknowledged. In fact, the lack of data on rural/urban divergence is clearly visible from national and international statistics. In this article, I will propose the thesis of the persistence, intensification and newly originated forms of rural/urban stratification and inequalities from a system-theory perspective. I distinguish between persistent forms of rural/urban stratification, as the weak participation in higher education, the ongoing intra and inter-regional disparities, the closure of small village schools, and new forms, such as the school choice policy in Hungary, the imperfect financial decentralisation mechanisms which requires compensatory mechanisms, and finally specific issues: the case of the Polish rural Kindergarten and the Roma pupils segregation in Hungary.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
C. Csaki & Z. Lerman (Eds). The challenge of rural development in the EU accession countries. Third World Bank/FAO EU accession Workshop. Washington: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development & the World Bank. Gherghinescu, O. (2008). Poverty and social exclusion in rural areas. Country studies: Romania. European Commission. http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/spsi Herbst, J. (2008). Bottlenecks in the decentralisation funding in Poland. MRPA papers (unpublished). http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/9291/ Horn, D. (2006). Do Small Settlements Provide Education of Inferior Quality? The Case of Hungary CEU Political Science Journal, 1,available at: www.ceeol.com. Levitas, A., Golinowska, S., & Herczynski J. (2001). Improving Rural Education in Poland. Warsaw: CASE - Center for Economic and Social Studies. Imre, A. (2009). Efficiency and Quality of Education in Small Village Schools in Hungary, Available at: http://edutech.elte.hu/kp-lab/content/smallschoolsangol.pdf Jakubowski, M. & Topinska, I. (2006). Impact of decentralisation on public service delivery and equity. Education and health sectors in Poland 1998-2003. Unpublished paper. Jigau, M. (Ed) (2000). Învăţământul rural din România: condiţii, probleme şi strategii de devoltare [Rural education in Romania: conditions, issues and development strategies]. Bucharest: ISE. Mincu, M. (2009). Myth, Rhetoric, and Ideology in Eastern European Education: Schools and Citizenship in Hungary, Poland, and Romania. European Education, 41(1), 55-78. OECD (2001). OECD Territorial Reviews. Hungary. Paris: Author. OECD (2008). OECD Territorial Reviews: Poland. Paris: Author. OECD (2005). Equity in education. Thematic review. Hungary - Country note. Paris: OECD. PIR (2005). Implementarea metodologiei si a instrumentelor pentru monitorizarea si evaluarea proiectului pentru învãtãmântul rural - primul studiu longitudinal. ISE: Bucharest Tarkowska, E. (2008). Poverty and social exclusion in rural areas. Country studies: Poland. European Commission. http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/spsi Verdery, C. (2004). Dialogic collectivization: "rich peasants" and unreliable cadres in the Romanian countryside, 1948-1959. http://web.gc.cuny.edu/anthropology/docs/ChiaburiEng9-6-03.doc. World Bank (2010). Romania Functional Review. Pre-university education sector. Final report. World Bank, Europe and entral Asia Region.
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