The Czech case shall shed some light on the processes of curriculum making at the Eastern part of the European Union. The Czech Republic and other Visegrád Group countries (Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) paved the way during the transition of the Communist Bloc from state socialism to liberal systems, but some reforms (re)introduced to the national educational systems in 1990s seem highly controversial today. It is the case of the early tracking of the Czech and Slovak pupils into two educational paths after the primary school. The Visegrad countries joined the EU in 2004. Shortly before or soon after the EU ascension, all countries launched the curricular reforms that more or less emulated global trends (Corner, 2015). In the Czech case, the new curricular frameworks exhibited all key features of „New Curricula“. These reforms were sometimes quite radical and provided the schools and teachers with high autonomy over curriculum and teaching (Dvořák, Urbánek & Starý, (2014). In recent years the four countries face the rise of populist politicians playing he card of the anti-liberal nationalism. In Czech Republic, the government already reshuffled the infrastructure/institutions' responsible for curriculum development and implementation. These changes revealed the persistent problem of low curriculum making capability at the different levels of the system. The proposals for a new wave of reforms (“reform of the reforms“) must cope with the dilemma of a progressive future-oriented curriculum with high expectations for all children and inherited differentiated (tracked) schooling. This paper provides an overview of recent curricular policies on the periphery of the EU with special focus on the Czech Republic. The specific characteristics of the curriculum-making processes in the post-socialist countries will be outlined. The macro level processes are studied by comparative policy analysis. For the micro-level, we use results of a longitudinal qualitative multiple case study of five combined primary and lower secondary school based mainly on interviews with school leadership, teachers and pupils and lesson observations and documentary analysis.

Corner, T. (2015). Education in the European Union: Post 2003 member states. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Dvořák, D., Urbánek, P., & Starý, K., (2014). High autonomy and low accountability. Case study of five Czech schools. Pedagogická orientace, 24(6), 919–940.