A “Post-egalitarian” society - from statistical towards liberal justice

The article provides a historical survey of the changes in the conception of educational equality and justice in Czech basic and secondary education. Three stages are identified: 1. unsuccessful administrative-political measures to improve equality of access for individuals of working class background; these ignored the requirements of individual cognitive work (1948 – the mid-1960’s); 2. the era of strong valorisation of school education under the conditions of paucity of educational opportunities; the correlation between social diff erentiation and educational merit was weak (1960’s – 1980’s); 3. the last 15 years saw a growing tendency towards early selectivity and differentiation considered as “fair“ by virtue of its reliance on supposedly socially and culturally neutral abilities and interests of the individual. The historical development in the area has resulted in a strongly individualistic conception of school success/failure.