The article discusses the role of institutions of representation -- understood as one of the examples of the idea of democratisation -- in the construction of the Polish school system. The basic changes that have occurred in this area since the beginning of the 1990s have been reconstructed. These processes have been reinterpreted in the context of three models of democratisation. Thus, the text presents diverse -- and not always consistent -- approaches to democratisation of the Polish school system after 1989.