Education, the Free Market and Post‐Communist Reconstruction

This paper offers a number of comparative observations on economic restructuring and education reform in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). It will be argued that there are powerful social and political forces which are making free market’ educational reforms, such as those being pursued in Britain, an increasingly attractive model of educational development in the CIS and Eastern Europe. It will be suggested that such a basis for reform not only leaves the tension between political and economic change unresolved, but threatens to undermine the process of post‐communist reconstruction.