The objective of the presentation is to identify principles, processes and actors of Czech school policy and school reforms. Our research question may be worded as What reforms and policy decisions co-created the present state of the school system in the Czech Republic? Most analyses of the internationalisation of European school policy describe the functioning of the institutions that emerged in western Europe. The first part of our presentation, on the contrary, describes the series of school reforms in former Czechoslovakia under the influence of the Soviet Union. Here, too, we find both continuity with older trends and the (selective) adoption of the models coming mainly from the centre of the Soviet empire, but also other global actors as the nations under communist rule also took part in organisations such as UNESCO. Also, the Iron Curtain was more permeable in some periods. The second part of the presentation shows the difficult - and still not completed – post-socialist school reforms and interplay of domestic and transnational actors. In the case of OECD, we describe the selective use of information from international education research to advance the reform agenda. The European Union triggered “external funding driven reforms”. Finally, non-profit organisations, transnational (such as the Open Society Fund), and recently also home-grown ones substitute for non-effective government in school reform. The current national curriculum review may show the extent to which transnational influences still prevail or whether nationalist flavour will appear. We analyse the key state-driven school reforms through this perspective, such as radical de-centralisation of the formerly uniform system; introduction of quasi-market mechanisms; curriculum reform and introduction of inclusive education; examples of policy decisions and network-driven school reform initiatives. Finally, we discuss the impact on schools and pupils, particularly the growing disparities between individual schools (and regions) and recent attempts to mitigate the damages.

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