The article considers the link between policies and practice in high school over the last three decades, and analyzes the relationship between the state educational requirements and the preparation of curricula in literature. The analysis indicates the paradoxical disparity between the current educational policies that identify expected results, such as high reading literacy, the development of key competencies, and the increase of the quality and efficiency of education and of the outdated cultural and ideological paradigm, which serves as a basis for the preparation of the new curricula. The research determines the “technological” discrepancies in the development of programmes, and poses the question of how they reflect on the specifics of activities, goals and results, as well as on the overall preparation for life, as proclaimed by the Bulgarian school.