Abstract
This chapter offers a brief and analytic overview of educational policy development since the demise of the communist regime in November 1989 in the Czech Republic. It argues that developments, especially those taking place in the early phase of the transformation process, have led to many structural changes and the introduction of early selection in the school system; new educational policy granted relatively high autonomy to schools and encourageda decentralization of public policy and education system.
All these changes have resulted in growing inequalities and differentiation of the education system. This chapter is therefore structured into two main parts.
The first part describes the process of transformation in the last twenty-five years, structured into four phases, whilst the second part documents the level of educational inequalities in the Czech education system.