The Romanian educational system was one of the most centralized before the change of the political system, thus, it is no wonder that after the change of regimes the decentralization of education seemed to be a justified claim. As one of its consequences, the Romanian education system has been the scene of permanent changes for the past one and a half decades, and the changes influenced the work and the situation of the teachers in several aspects. Our basic research question emerged against such a backdrop, which aimed at reviewing the relationship between the educational reform and the teachers. In this study we present only a segment of the results of our research, namely the opinion that a strata of Hungarian teachers from Romania has about the social appreciation of their profession. The results show that the teachers from Hargita County are not satisfied with the social appreciation of their profession: they consider it worse than that of other intellectual categories. The inquired teachers are also unsatisfied with the 'official' appreciation of the profession; at the same time, the appreciation of the different teachers' professions is in relation with the activities on the different levels of education. Hungarian teachers from the region see the rise of esteem of the profession in the solving of the problems of financing, of educational policy and of teachers' vocational courses.
