The topic of curricular equality has received attention in recent years as processes of education decentralization, marketization and privatization increase disparities between schools and communities. All students should have the same opportunity to encounter a broad, relevant and high-quality curriculum (Priestley, 2025; Riddle et al., 2025). However, we still have little knowledge about how geography influences curricular opportunities, especially at the primary or lower secondary level. This study contributes to the understanding of spatial and social factors influencing access to the foreign language curriculum at the lower secondary level in a Central European country.

While the requirement for equity of educational outcomes may be a maximalist concept, equality of access to various learning opportunities is perceived as a minimalist requirement. In this sense, geographically oriented studies in particular focus on spatial inequalities in the availability of post-compulsory schools or qualifications of various types and/or of different quality (Bueno & Bonal, 2023), using concepts of supply of schooling or learning opportunities that differ depending on the place where a student lives. Geography of curriculum opportunities in primary or junior secondary schools is a relatively under-researched area as previous studies has focused on a few mainly English-speaking countries (Dean et al., 2023; Grant, 2022; Perry & Southwell, 2014). Here we address the spatial patterns of opportunities for foreign language (FL) learning in lower secondary school, i.e. for students in early adolescence. Arguments for FL learning can be primarily economic (preparation for jobs), or more humanistic and academic – as an important way to learn about different cultures. FL knowledge significantly facilitates the mobility of young people during their study course and expands the possibilities of school graduates to find employment on the labour market. In this way, language instruction mitigates the negative effects of family background and contributes to reducing inequalities in education.

Modernity’s educational projects often aimed at the unification of the population of nation states and therefore preferred a decontextualized curriculum not accounting for local specificities (Barthes et al., 2018). The education systems in most countries under communist rule, as a specific case of modernization, were characterized by a high degree of centralization and standardization. The compulsory foreign language taught in all comprehensive schools was Russian, which was generally unpopular. Other foreign languages at this level were only extra-curricular options (if any). The transformation processes of society and economy after the fall of the communist government and the liberalization of education brought or reinforced spatial differences between the contents of education (curriculum), processes and conditions in schools, and student outcomes. Today, European education policy pursues the “Mother Tongue + 2” policy. In Czechia, this practically means that a student takes one foreign language (usually English) from primary grades. In lower secondary school, student is obliged to start studying Other Foreign Language (OFL), and almost 90% of Czech students study either German or Russian, and about 10% of students learn French or Spanish. Only a quarter of a percent of students learn Italian, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian or Hebrew.

The main objective of the study is to determine spatial factors influencing the availability of a broad and high-quality language curriculum, and their interaction with the social and ethnic background of the student. We further describe the changes in these factors over time and, in particular, how educational peripheries are formed as places where negative factors accumulate (Robertson, 2021).

The research design is census-type descriptive analysis based on administrative data on all relevant schools in Czechia (n = 2542) a questionnaire survey of convenience sample of students (n = 16 447) and teachers (n = 1815). To determine curricular opportunity in individual schools, we used administrative data from individual student records, or student registers (hereinafter referred to as the register). The register is maintained by all primary and secondary schools and includes data on the language of instruction and what other languages the student is learning. The Ministry of Education aggregates data from registers at the school level and makes them available to researchers. The data we work with is as of September 30, 2022; the school year in which the survey described below was conducted. Anonymized data are used so some ethical barriers here do not apply. A significant limitation, however, is the absence of some individual information in the register (e.g. on the social background of the students). For description on the quality of language teaching and other relevant experiences of students, we used data from a questionnaire survey on foreign language teaching conducted by the Czech School Inspectorate in the 2022/2023 school year (Dvořák et al., 2023). The inspection is authorized by law for this type of activity and the dataset was anonymous. The data were further aggregated to the level of municipalities and districts (okres) and linked with background data on sociodemographic characteristics from public registers. Spatial patterns were visualized and interpreted using the QGIS software package for map creation and geographic analysis.

The results identified three spatial factors influencing curriculum opportunities. As expected, one of the factors is the size of the municipality, with the size of the school as the mediator. The offer of OFL outside cities is limited mainly to Russian and German. However, relative geographical position of the school’s municipality (in relation to neighbouring states) appears to be even more significant near the border with Austria and the economically developed Bavaria as an "old" federal state of Germany. The third factor is peripherality, especially in the “inner peripheries”, where the share of teaching of Russian remains high. Curricular opportunities shall also be considered in a broader sense, encompassing not only the availability of a particular school subject (in this case an OFL), but also related curricular experiences. Students in selective (grammar) schools are much more likely to be taught by a native speaker of OFL than students in comprehensive schools and have significantly more chances of participating in a school-organised visit to a country where the OFL is spoken. Spatial and social factors interact here, as selective (grammar) schools are more accessible in urban environments and to families with higher socioeconomic status. This study confirmed the existence of spaces within Czechia whose residents are disadvantaged in access to broad curriculum, quality teaching and other important educational experiences. As previous research showed (Dean et al., 2023), schools located in rural, remote and peripheral areas have a limited offer of languages taught. It might be expected that in certain places, young people have limited choice in education as a form of public service, but this study also point to some less obvious spatial barriers in access to broad curriculum beyond th typical patterns of regional educational inequalities.

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