Schools in a Network of (External) Relationships

The post-socialist transformation processes of primary schools cannot be fully understood without a deeper insight into the (human) relationships and the environments in which the schools were situated. The introductory part of the chapter focuses on students, parents, and teachers. The narrators’ perspectives of the development and transformation of relationships between the different people involved during the post-socialist transformation are the central focus. The text mentions the topic of the (economic) transformations of society based on neoliberalism, the development of private entrepreneurship, and individualism with regard to the changes in parents’ behaviour and the transformations of their relationships with teachers. The text touches on the unpreparedness of teachers for the transformation of their position after 1989 and the challenges connected to the perception of parents as partners of the school. The next part of the chapter focuses on school life in different environments and locations: in small and large cities and in the countryside. Schools that were considered to be of high quality in the 1990s are investigated, as are those that faced a number of challenges. The stories of the schools are connected on two levels—continuities from the socialist period and the need to face new and often unexpected challenges. The competitive relationship between primary schools and the newly established multi-year grammar schools is described. At the end of the chapter, attention is paid to an important external influence in the life of schools: the School Inspectorate.