Common legacy, different paths: the transformation of educational systems in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland

The goal of this work is to better understand the institutional changes in the educational systems of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. We demonstrate that the educational reforms implemented during the transformation introduced very di erent institutional arrangements in the four countries, despite the fact that their systems shared many common characteristics at the beginning of the 1990s. Di erences between the national approaches to educational reforms are particularly re ected in the modes of education decentralisation, the level of school autonomy, accountability and funding mechanisms. We believe that di erent institutional arrangements may have contributed to the divergent achievements of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland in the PISA programme.