The article is a contribution to the preparation of a school reform in Czechoslovakia. It gives a survey of innovations at basic and secondary schools in Finland and Denmark. Here the innovations in the contents and organisation of the humanities and in managing the school (the autonomy) are in question. The major innovations refer to the variability of the time proportions for individual school subjects, to the contents get-together between the humanities and the vocational education, to introducing new school subjects and new study branches, and others.