Contemporary Europe faces many hardly soluble challenges. Be they geopolitical controversies, migration movements, clash of cultural groups, economical, demographical or environmental problems. What is the role of education in looking for answer to all these as well as others tasks? Public consensus perceives it as fundamental (e.g. Woodhall 1997; Woolcock, Narayan 2000). Therefore, many reflections deals with principle, goals and effectivity of educational systems in various countries. And more and more they are discussed a sustainability of educational systems or scenarios of their future development. As an example six OECD The Schooling for Tomorrow Scenarios (OECD 2011) could be mentioned. They work with continuation of existing models of school institutions (status quo) or with strengthening of schools and diversification of their functions and forms or on the other hand, with a decline in the position of schools comparing to another forms of education.

At the same time, each country has different position for providing and development of educational systems which arise from local incidence of general developmental trends, as well as from regionally and historically specific conditions (Wahla 1988). The conception of school policy, the character of school system, school distribution and educational provision are influenced by many factors, which could be classified according to various aspects. They could be distinguished on exogenous factors, e.g. natural conditions, population density (Cortbett 2007), and endogenous or subjective factors, e.g. human and social capital of providers and implementators of education, value and image of education among public (Holloway, Pimlott-Wilson 2012). Further, they could be distinguished on factors which directly influence supply and demand for education (e.g. population development and number of pupils, school laws) (Hulík, Tesárková 2009) and implicit factors (e.g. cultural norms, economical situation of the state or the region) (Sherman, Sage 2011).

On general level the aim of the poster is to classify the factors influencing the elementary schooling in selected countries through the whole Europe from the West to the East with references to relevant literature. Further, on empirical level, several key factors will be analysed in more detail. Their current stage or longer development will be compared with the aim to categorize the countries to several typological groups. The conditions for schooling in particular countries and typological groups will be compared not only in table representation but their differentiations will be presented even cartographically in maps. As a conclusion, the empirically studied conditions in the typological groups of countries will be discussed in relationship to theoretically defined OECD The Schooling for Tomorrow Scenarios.

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