David Greger
Charles University in Prague
David Greger, Ph.D.
Institute for Research and Development of Education
Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education
Myslikova 7, Prague 1
110 00 Czech Republic
e-mail: greger@uvrs.pedf.cuni.cz

As the main topic of the round table is to analyze the models of comprehensive schooling in the international perspective, I was asked to concentrate my contribution to the situation in the Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Hungary and Poland), the so called transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe. These countries have very common cultural and historical background:

• culturally they belong to the latin-christianity tradition,
• their education systems were formed and shaped by the legislation of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy
• they have undergone through the „dark period“ of totalitarian communist regime, characterized by the cultural and political isolation and strong one-way orientation to the Soviet union.
• collapse of the communist regime started the large transformation of these societies and broad and deep educational reforms were integral part of the transformation process.

In this paper, I will first emphasize the quest for comprehensive school in the Czechoslovakia in the historical perspective and I will outline the debates surrounding it. In the second part I will describe the current status of the Czech educational system, that is very selective and has many common features especially with Slovak and as well with Hungarian educational system. The Polish educational system was recently restructured towards a more comprehensive one. In the conclusion I will try to summarize the main arguments of both proponents and opponents of the comprehensive school for 11 to 16-year-olds, and I will cope with them.

For the whole paper I do concentrate only on the schooling at the lower-secondary level for the students of (approximately) 11 to 15/16-year-olds, even though recent debates about comprehensive schooling as such with regards to the equity of educational systems are concerned as well with the upper-secondary schooling and with access to higher levels of education (especially tertiary). The upper-secondary level of education is in many countries characterized by the three separate types of schools: upper secondary general schools (gymnasia), specialized technical schools and vocational schools. Especially in the CEE countries has this triple structure long tradition, and the vocational stream was predominant in all socialist countries. The allocation of the students into different streams of upper-secondary education is of great interest to the researchers working in the field of equity and social stratification in education, as well as the transition from secondary to tertiary level, nevertheless these questions are apart from the main topic of the roundtable.

1. The construction and deconstruction of comprehensive school in the Czechoslovak context from 1945 till 1989.

As the proposal for this roundtable states, the model of comprehensive schools for 11 to 16-year-olds was supported by the OECD in the 1960s, and was seen as the catalyst for both, economic as well as social progress of the nations. However in my contribution I have to go a some years back in our history, since in the 1960s the Czech education system was comprehensive one already for a quite long time. The great debate about the establishing of the comprehensive schooling in the Czechoslovakia took place in the post-war era, especially in 1945 till 1948. The next period from the 1948 till 1989 was determined by the cataclysmic events of February 1948, when the Communist party took power and also the education sector was under their exclusive control.

The Czechoslovak school structure was basically with only moderate changes inherited from the 19 th century, when by the 1869 School Act compulsory education was extended to eight years. Education was provided by an five-year „ obecná škola“ (community school) that was the common school for the pupils from 6 to 11 years of age. After five years of community school it was possible to choose one of the three tracks (streams):

- additional 3 years at community school – it was the dead-end, because completing eighth year of community school did not enable student to continue further in education at the upper-secondary level

- a three-year „měšťanská škola“ (civic school, sometimes the translation „town school“ is used, because these schools where established in the towns, not in countryside - it had to be at least one in every school district) offering lower secondary education of a higher standard than that offered by the community schools; these schools allowed student to continue in some types of upper-secondary education

- secondary schools, i.e. a seven-year„ reálná škola“ (secondary technical school, real-schule) or an eight-year „ gymnázium “ (gymnasia - upper secondary general schools)

This school structure with education for pupils from 11 to 14(or15)-year-olds being realized in three parallel and separate branches of study was criticized already in inter-war era, when this kind of structure was seen by many educators as undemocratic and elitists. The leading person of this criticism was prof. Václav Příhoda, J. Dewey`s disciple. He criticized the segregated education from the position of social justice, especially by calling the education system to achieve an equality of educational opportunity understood by him as the equality of treatment or conditions ( l'égalité de traitement ) 1. He pointed out, that selective lower levels of secondary schools (gymnasia and real-schule) where predominantly attended by the pupils from families with better educational and cultural background. These kids were given better education, because the secondary schools had better educated school personnel and more finances (means more and better teaching materials, better equipment). He also stressed in critique that to pupils from community schools and civic schools the access to higher levels of education.

was in reality denied. The criticism of the segregated education of young pupils from 11 to 15-years-old is well documented and more elaborated in many of his works. He was the leading person of the movement of free and reform schools that claimed restructuring of the educational system. They called for abolition of parallel branches of study and replacing them by comprehensive schools, where all the pupils will be given the same quality of education. They developed a concept of a comprehensive secondary school and they were verifying its feasibility for being implemented into school reality in several experimental schools in 1920s and 1930s. Unfortunately this hopeful development was interrupt by the Second World War. However the debates on introducing the comprehensive school continued again from the 1945. The development and establishment of the comprehensive school at the lower-secondary level was identified as one of the priority task that needs to be solved by the resolution passed at the teachers` congress in Prague in 1945. V. Příhoda was in that time appointed by the ministry of education as an advisor for the preparation of school reform aiming at the introduction of the comprehensive schooling. In this year he also published the book entitled “The Idea of comprehensive lower-secondary school” (see Příhoda 1945), where he summarized proposals for the reform with its philosophical and theoretical foundations as well as practical dimensions. In this book he was dealing with some objections raised by the opponents of the comprehensive schooling. The most often articulated objection pointed out that introducing the common (comprehensive) school for all the pupils will lower the quality of education. The main opponents of the comprehensive school were the teachers from secondary schools and most educated parents. The spokesman of the secondary school teachers R. Mertlík formulated this opponents viewpoint in his book “The Danger of the Comprehensive School” (see Mertlík 1947), where he states, that the quality of the intended comprehensive school will be even lower than the quality of education in the present-days civic schools. He wants to retain the existence of the gymnasia and real-schule and even calls for greater selectivity of these schools 2. He claimed that out of 40 students at the secondary school only 15 or 20 is clever enough to follow the academic standards at these schools; the rest of pupils (he calls them very improperly as “scraps, junk”) just makes the teachers` work more difficult and take away from him the joy of teaching. This kind of objections are strictly elitists, stemming from believe that the role of the school is to create an highly educated small elite, and that this will rise up the economic progress of the nation. They believe that introducing comprehensive schooling will do harm the talented pupils and will not bring great benefit to the rest of pupils; they believe that comprehensive school will lead to the mediocrity.

V. Příhoda and other advocates of the comprehensive school were aware of this criticism and responded in two ways. First of all they stressed the social aspects of comprehensive school, mainly its role in strengthening the social cohesion of the society and the moral appeals to equity. Then they also coped with the objection concerned with the lowering of quality in education. Particularly V. Příhoda offer the model of comprehensive school but the one, that would apply differentiation practices within the school. He criticized the model that creates the groups of students of high/average/low intelligence that are educated separately in all the subjects as an ineffective one. Instead of this segregation he proposed a model of comprehensive school where students will be differentiated according to their ability in each separate subject area. Each pupil thus cold be the part of several different groups of student for each subject. If the pupil failed in certain subject area, he does not have to repeat (retake) all the subjects from that year, but only the subject-area he failed. This kind of organization in school is administratively very difficult and requires a very sophisticated school and time management. Also V. Příhoda is aware of this limitations and suggested that there could be only 5 integrated subject-areas taught at school. Each day all the students in the same time are taught the same subject area, it is the way how the school could be organized to allow the pupils to be parts of the different study groups for each subject. This kind of differentiated organization of education was tested in several experimental schools. Among the other advocates of comprehensive school we could mention the rector of the Charles university B. Bydžovský. He proposed a slighter type of differentiation that is realized within each class. The teacher could divide students in each subject into several groups according to their ability. He believed in a teachers` ability to differentiate the content as well as methods of teaching in response to a diverse population and needs in a heterogeneous classroom. Therefore he stressed the quality of teacher preparation and further teacher training.

So far we could summarize the discussion on comprehensive schooling from 1945 – 1948 as follows. Generally saying there was the agreement on establishing the comprehensive schooling for the pupils form 11 to 14-years-old. However the question of how to assure the maximal development of the potential of each child in a so diverse student population was the main issue to be tackled. There was agreement that the comprehensive school needs to be internally differentiated and more views on how to do this. Opponents of the comprehensive schooling were groups with vested interests – secondary school teachers and principals as well as parents with high level of social and cultural capital. Opponents warned against lowering the quality of education, while proponents stressed the social advantages of comprehensive schooling and also pointed out that comprehensive school using an internal differentiation to adjust the teaching to the needs of each student will rise the average level and quality of education of the whole nation.

Stemming from this discussion Ministry of education with the help of V. Příhoda prepared the bill proposal for school reform in 1945. However this education bill proposal was very controversial, since it did not wanted only to introduce the comprehensive school instead of the three separate branches of study, but as well it also proposed the abolition of schools administered by churches. This was the very controversial part of the law, that was the reason why the bill proposal has not been approved till 1948. The Catholic church with some other churches were the main opponents of this Act and showed to the disagreement of the bill with the constitution. 3

However the communist party passed the School Act in April 1948, after they took power, and introduced totalitarian regime. The education sector was under their exclusive control, so there was no room for debating and effecting the education policy in that time.

The School Act on Comprehensive School of April 1948 stipulating the basic principles of comprehensive education nationalized the education system as a whole and eliminated the influence of the Church. Basic education lasting nine years was compulsory, uniform and free of charge. Basic education was preceded by a non-compulsory mateřská škola. After basic education, which was divided into a 1st and a 2nd stage (2nd stage replaced the previous segregated structure of three separate streams), there were schools of the "third stage" - gymnázia (upper secondary general schools) and odborné školy (vocational and technical schools) - and then higher education institutions.

The followed period we could characterized with Průcha and Walterová (1992) as follows: „Since 1948 the Czechoslovak system of education underwent several reforms and many changes. Being arranged by the Central Committee of the Communist party they were, unfortunately, stimulated much more by political and administrative decisions than by a reasonable search for the optimal educational model. Consequently the progressive concept of a comprehensive school (experimentally proved and discussed already since the 1930`s) was gradually dismissed. The school was centralized, and unified. It no longer allowed support for different learners` and teachers` potentialities, beliefs, interests, or orientation. But intolerance toward alternative thinking and feeling, particularly to any religious feeling, damaged the democratic and humanistic framework of schools. The utilitarian philosophy of marxism-leninism, communist morality, collectivism, class fight and discipline based on subordinated concept of man was enforced.”

As a one exception from this „dark period“ of the totalitarian regime could be mentioned the era of 1960`s, that was the period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia - fear diminished and political and artistic freedoms increased in that time. It was also the era, when the question of unified socialist comprehensive school was questioned once more openly. Even the Communist party itself acknowledged that the original idea of the comprehensive, but internally differentiated school, was deformed and led to the lowering of quality of education. (Resolution of the Czech Communist party form 22 nd October 1964). Also educator M. Cipro (1966) questioned the uniform manner of education that did not account for differences in student population. He pointed out back to the highly segregated practice before the year 1948, when the pupils were divided into three separate tracks. He identified the problem of this type of differentiation as being a two-fold. The first problem was, that the differentiation (selection) was realized very early , at age of 11, when the psychologically the pupils were still in progress and speedy development. The second problem of this type of selection was its rigidity and irreversibility. Stemming from that critique he offered several types of differentiating instruction that were verified (tested) at 4 experimental schools. As the result of these experiments were in the 1965 implemented these kinds of differentiation at the last (9 th ) grade of comprehensive school: 1) teaching of mathematics and mother tongue in a groups created according to the achievement in these subject, 2) creating the class-groups according to the ability of the pupils for all the subject-areas. He also recommended the introducing of facultative courses in a 7 th and 8 th grade, as well as ability grouping of pupils within the heterogeneous classroom. However after the invasion in 21 st August 1968 the period labeled as normalization and consolidation followed and the differentiation introduced in 1965 in the 9 th grade was abolished. Social credibility and the cultural status of the education fell even further, particularly since the last educational reform in 1976. Then the most regressive measures were assumed. Consequently the divergence from trends in other developed countries was widened.

For more elaborated and more in-depth description of the debates on comprehensive schooling and its development in historical perspective see Vorlíček (2004) and Walterová (2004).

2. The negation of the unified comprehensive school system and introduction of early selection to the Czech educational system after 1989

The main characteristics of the Czechoslovak education system in the 1989 were similar to other CEE countries. The comprehensive (common) basic school was in a way the core of communist education system. It was not common only in the sense that it gathered all the student population of the age from 6 to 14-years-old, but they also offered uniform methods and contents without respect to individual differences. The break with this communist heritage after 1989 has been radical and the transition of educational system brutal,; all the more so because in Czechoslovakia, contrary to what happened in other CEE countries in 1980s, there has been no gradual loosening of the grip of the communist regime and no softening of the unitary education model. The education reform process has been, mainly between 1989 and 1994, predominantly spontaneous and the result of a bottom-up process. The trend of “ negating the past and restoring the ‘status quo ante'” was pursued – particularly in political and academic circles - with the lack of profound knowledge of West-European and global developments in education policies and without a constructive view of the long-term prospects of the development of democratic schooling. The aim of reforms was immediately to redress the shortcomings in education caused by the totalitarian regime and to establish such conditions as had marked Czech education in pre-war Czechoslovakia – i.e. before 1939. One of the greatest example of this trasformation process is of a great interest to our debate, it was the restoration of the traditional gymnasia (general secondary schools) operating on the basis of early selection and segregation of children with high cultural capital. One of the leading motto of the reforms in 1989 was the Deconstruction (or even destroying) of the communist comprehensive school. They were successful in this respect and so the education system in the Czech republic and its further development included selective streams of multi-year gymnázia. The structure of the educational system was as follows:

Nine-year compulsory basic education (i.e. primary and lower secondary), normally

entered by children at the age of six (with the exception of those who have been proved not to be mature enough), is provided by two types of school: basic schools and gymnázia (general secondary schools). While the 1st stage of basic education (i.e. primary) covers the first five years of basic school and is designed for all children within the relevant age groups (with the exception of a small proportion of disabled children), the 2nd stage of basic education (lower secondary) attended by children aged 11-15 takes place in segregated streams. The first is the 6th-9th year of basic school, the second is the first four years of eight-year gymnázia and the third is the first two years of six-year gymnázia . ( Gymnázia also provide four-year programmes at the level of upper secondary education). At basic schools the transition of 11-year-old pupils from the 1st to the 2nd stage is automatic. Admission to six- and eight-year gymnázia programmes is based on selection consisting of various types of written and oral examinations designed by gymnázia teachers (normally in the mother tongue and mathematics), and, sometimes, intelligence tests. The decision concerning admission on the basis of examination results as the main criterion is taken by the gymnázium principal (head-teacher) who is also a civil servant. The intake numbers are determined by the school administration (approximately 10% of the relevant age group) and range from 6 to 14% depending on the region. The national average in 2002/03 was 8.5%. The number of applicants for six- and eight-year gymnázia programmes is double the intake number.

Six- and eight-year gymnázia, which had operated in the CR until 1948, were reestablished by a 1990 amendment to the Education Act. The aim was to provide more

demanding education facilitating further academic studies to students as young as 11 who

show a higher level of cognitive capacities. As reports by the Czech School Inspectorate have repeatedly stated, the segregation of more talented pupils from the rest, who continue attending basic schools, has resulted in a gradual decrease in the standards of educational processes and achievements of this part of the school population. The recommendation of OECD examiners of 1996 (see OECD 1996) as to forming a comprehensive lower secondary school was not adopted by the Ministry of Education. The government-promoted White Paper of 2001 reiterated that the two streams of education should be gradually merged and that internal differentiation should take place within basic school. So basically they wanted to continue in the discussion from 1945-1948 and later in 1960s about the ways and possibilities of differentiating instruction within a comprehensive school. The inclusion of this recommendation into the new education bill in the form of gradual abolition of lower years of six- and eight-year gymnázia prompted public debate which was dominated by the requirement on the part of parents with higher levels of education and socio-economic status that a more demanding education be retained for their children. The pressure exerted by the parents, gymnázia directors and teachers and academics on the media, not to mention their political influence, prevented the proposed reform and was one of the reasons the bill was rejected as a whole in 2001. These groups blamed the advocates of comprehensive schooling for their left and communist way of thinking, labeling them as the “social engineers”, that would like to take the right of free choice of school from the parents. The debate was the emotional with lack of the academic arguments and analyses. The selective stream was preserved and is repeatedly criticized by the academics, using the data from the international research projects (such as PISA). Because the abolition of the multiyear-gymnázia was politically not passable, only moderate changes were introduced in the new education bill that aim at least in closer convergence of these two streams of education at the lower secondary level.

The new education bill passed on in 2004 proposes an interim compromise in that there will be only one national curricular document for the two parallel types of lower secondary education – a framework curriculum for basic education (the curricular reform is ongoing process in the CR). It will be the foundation for the development of school educational programmes at both basic schools and six- and eight-year gymnázia . Moreover, the number of teaching periods at basic school should gradually increase so as to be equal to gymnázia in quantitative terms. The levels of pay of teachers at both types of school have been made identical. However, the “numerus clausus” is preserved (±10 % of 11-year-olds) as well as the selective admission proceedings to six- and eight-year gymnázia , which disfavors children with lower cultural capital – as the results of the PISA reading literacy tests in the Czech Republic have revealed.

The Czech legislation concerned with schooling provides for the establishment of schools and classes with a specific focus which provide extended teaching in some subjects : foreign languages, physical education and sports, mathematics and natural sciences, music, visual arts and information technologies. These kind of school is another type of the selective study stream. The specialized curriculum is employed from the 3 rd year (languages – at the age of 8) or 6th year (other subjects). The proportion of pupils attending these schools in the overall number of basic school pupils is 9.7% (4.4% in schools and classes with extended language teaching, 2.5% in physical education and sports and 1.2% in mathematics and natural sciences). Parents show great interest in extended teaching in selected subjects – particularly languages and sports (demand is twice as high as the number of places available) hoping for their children to achieve better results as compared to other basic schools. Admission to this type of basic school is also up to school directors who decide on the basis of entry examinations designed by the school and taken by children at the age of 8 (or 11). Again, pupils from families with higher cultural capital are in a more favorable situation.

The similar structure of education system is in the Slovak republic, because of the common educational policy till 1992. After the 1992 election in which parties with incompatible policies won in the two parts of the federation, the split of the Czechoslovak state and the emergence of two independent states - the Czech Republic and Slovakia - was inevitable (from 1 January 1993). Also the Hungarian system is very similar and is characterized by the early selection. All three systems separate students into a different tracks (streams) at the age of 11 (in the CR first selection takes part at the age of 8, as was described above) . Commonly these educational systems are being identified as the selective ones, showing the large dependency of the educational outcomes on students ` social background (SES) not only among individuals but as well due to large differences between the institutions. To show that the debate (or more precisely lack of the academic and open debate) and structure of the Hungarian education system is very similar to trhe Czech one we cam proof by quoting the authors of the Hungarian Country Report on Demand for Schooling prepared for the OECD (see Lanet-György and Vágó 2004, p. 52):

“Although the central educational government of both the consecutive conservative and liberal governments attempted at reducing the above mentioned differentiation of lower secondary education that involved early selection and an increase in the inequalities of chances they could neither ban nor roll back the 6- or 8-grade general secondary schools due to the explicit demand of the most powerful parents' stakeholder groups. The 6- or 8-grade secondary education preparing for further education in 2 or 4 more years than an average secondary school was of great importance until the mid-nineties when only 10% of a given age group could get into higher education institutions. Now that 50% of a given age group get into universities or colleges, the early and tough selection is not justified from the aspect of getting into higher education, although the ratio of those admitted is still the highest in the 6- or 8- grade general secondary schools. Now parents send their children to these schools first of all because they know that owing to strong selection their children can learn among more motivated students with better abilities and good family background where more serious behavior problems or drug abuse is less frequent.” The common feature that is the main barrier to implement educational reforms for achieving equity in education was stated by Anne Sliwka (2005) as follows: “With regards to equity issues, data about general attitudes to equity in education thus need to be contrasted and compared with data revealing how private ambitions of parents influence the choices they make for their children. It is interesting to observe that in all the countries, even Scandinavian Finland and Denmark with their strong traditions of educational equity, parents' demands with regard to their own children's education differ from their more generalized statements about social justice. This shows the difficulty of winning over middle-class parents for educational reforms aiming at greater equity if they feel that this might disadvantage their own children.” Even though she applies this statement generally to most of the ed. systems in developed countries, I would add that this is particularly valid for the CEECs and it was revealed in discussion on comprehensive schooling.

Only the Poland differs from the other three Visegrad countries and is characterized by the different , more comprehensive ed. system. They have a single structure school at the lower-secondary level, called gymnazjum (gymnasia). So the Polish ed. system is composed of a six-years of primary school ( Szkoła podstawowa ) for pupils form 7 to 12 years of age, next is the lower secondary level gymnasium ( Gimnazjum ) lasting three years (students at age 13-15) and this level is followed by the 3 years in upper-secondary education ( Liceum ). Thus the structure of polish system is 6+3+3/2 (2 years is for specialized vocational school ( Szkola zawodowa ) that does not lead to the Matura examination. Why the Polish ed. system has daveloped in a different direction as cotrasted to the other three Visegrad countries, is worth of further analysis. And the analysis of the public debate in Poland would be of a great interest here.

Conlusion

We may conclude that the discussion of the pro a cons of the comprehensive school system in the Czechoslovakia was the greatest in the period of the 1945 – 1948. The basic arguments for and against the reform towards comprehensive school turned around the questions of achieving high quality as well as equity of the educational system. Since the 1960s OECD proposed that comprehensive school is the effective organization for achieving both equity and high standards of education. Even though this notion is recently a leading paradigm for school organizations and is supported by many scholars across the developed nations (see for example Demeuse et al. 2001), it does not go un-debated. Particularly in the CEE countries the concept of equity is infiltrated by the bad experience of bureaucratically-imposed uniformity and collectivism in education during the socialist era. Equity is by many of the people in this countries believed to be in conflict with a notion of intellectual ability, according to which only a small proportion of student (around 15%) are seen as capable of pursuing high level and high quality education. According to this mistaken point of view, the comprehensive school would lead to lowering the standards. In OECD countries, this narrow notion of ability was abandoned as early as the mid-1960s, when the notion was seen as overly simplistic and scientifically unjustifiable. There is recently some progress in the perceptions of fairness of Czech educational system by Czech society, as was revealed in many polls (e.g. 64% of society believes that all children regardless of their talent, aptitudes or social background should be educated together as long as possible... for more results of these polls and their discussion see Kotásek-Greger-Procházková 2004).

Thus the particularly important question that need to be answered and solved over and over (and we could see that is very often solved differently between diverse comprehensive systems in Europe) is how to differentiate instruction, and education, so it could effectively account for the differences in students abilities and interests. Answering this question is the necessity for the establishing of the comprehensive school system.

Literature:

Cigánek, R. Postoj katolické církve k zákonu o jednotné škole - ročníková práce z pedagogiky. Praha: PedF UK, 2003

Cipro, M. Diferenciace základního vzdělávání. Praha: SPN, 1966.

Demeuse, M.; Crahay, M.; Monseur, Ch. Efficiency and Equity. In Hutmacher, W.; Cochrane, D.; Bottani, N. (Eds.) In Pursuit of Equity in Education: Using international indicators to compare equity policies. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001, s. 65-91.

EC. Equity of the European Educational Systems: A Set of Indicators . Final report of the project Socrates 6.1.2. „Devising international indicators on equity of educational systems“. EC : Université de Liége, 2003.

Greger, D. Koncept spravedlivosti a diferenciace žáků. In WALTEROVÁ, E. a kol. Úloha školy v rozvoji vzdělanosti - 2. díl. Brno: Paido, 2004, s. 362-370.

Grisay, A. Quels indicateurs pour quelle réduction de l'inégalité scolaire. Revue de la Direction générale de l'Organisation des Etudes. roč. 19, November 1984, s.1-14.

Kotásek, J.; Greger, D.; Procházková, I. Demand for Schooling in the Czech Republic (Country Report for OECD). Paris: OECD, 2004. dostupné na WWW:  http://www.oecd.org/edu/future/sft/demand . vstup 20. 9. 2004

Lanet-György, J.; Vágó, M.I. Understanding Demand for Schooling. Country Report – Hungary. Paris, 2004.

Mertlík, R. Nebezpečí jednotné školy. Praha: Václav Petr, 1947.

OECD. Access, Participation and Equity. Paris: OECD, 1993.

OECD. Reviews of National Policies for Education: Czech republic. Paris: OECD, 1996.

Průcha. J.; Walterová, E. Education in a Changing Society: Czechoslovakia. Praha: H+H, 1992.

Příhoda, V. Idea školy druhého stupně. Brno: Ústřední učitelské nakladatelství a knihkupectví, 1945.

Sliwka, A. Demand for Schooling: Perception, Participation and Choice. Paris: OECD, 2005.

Vorlíček, Ch. České školství v letech 1945 – 2000. In Česká pedagogika: Proměny a výzvy. Praha: PedF UK, 2004.

Walterová, E. Úloha školy v rozvoji vzdělanosti - Díl 1. Brno: Paido, 2004.

1For theoretical distinction between three basic conceptions of equity or equality of educational opportunity defined as 1. equality of access or opportunity, 2. equality of treatment of conditions, or as 3. equality of results (achievement) see for example this works: Grisay 1984, OECD 1993, Demeuse et al. 2001, EC 2003, Greger 2004.

2 The selectivity of secondary schools is documented by the rates of enrolment of pupils form 11 to 14 years of age in different types of schools in 1946: three grades at community schools 5,5%; civic (town) schools 83,5%; lower-secondary schools (gymnasia, real-schule) 11%.

3 F or more details on the opossition of Catholic church towards the Comprehensive School Act see Cigánek 2003.