بازاریابی مدرسه و تقسیم بندی: مطالعه مقایسه ای در بلغارستان و جمهوری چک School marketing and segmentation: A comparative study in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic

1. Introduction The paper describes the processes and marketing strategies of education in a post- communist and liberal transition context in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. Its objective is also to describe the main consequences of the growth of school marketing, which is exponential but not regulated in these two post transition countries. These processes lead, indeed, to an accentuation of segregationist and hyper-bureaucratic educational practices (Maroy, 2010): they are based on the new logic of performance in a hyper competitive educational context (Ball, 2003, 2004) and have a strong impact on renewed school segmentation and inequalities. So, our work contributes to research on this typical phenomenon, linked to a neoliberal and globalized rhetoric of education (Oplatka & Hemsley-Brown, 2012; Torres, 2009). Its specificity is the analysis of the post-communist context which is significant because of the heavy and sustainable impact of the totalitarian and bureaucratic past on education but also because of the reluctance of the social actors to analyze their history (Mayer, 2004). The development of the school market in this context is problematic because by blocking educational innovation and the regulating action of the social actors (Ball & Maroy, 2009; Oplatka, Hemsley-Brown, & Foskett, 2002), it prevents the analysis of the links between the global constraints and the local needs inherited from the past. This is seen in both post totalitarian countries compared, renowned for their efforts to get involved in the European educational globalization, for their discrimination against pupils of diverse backgrounds and for their rather unequal school systems in the pre-communist period. Any concrete educational situation is tightly linked to the specific context in which it occurs. Specific contexts at national, regional and local levels (social background, history, politics, culture and economics) are to be included when we try to ‘export’ educational or training models and concepts to other countries. This is the price of real success and efficiency to improve educational performance at each national level but also at the European level. Hence it is necessary, prior to presenting the research itself, to inform readers about the context in which these survey data were obtained.