Session Information
23 SES 07 A, Networks, Privatizations and Governance (Part 2)
Paper Session continued from 23 SES 06 A
Contribution
Traditionally regarded as a prime example of the universalistic social democratic welfare state regime (Esping-Andersen, 1990), Sweden has incorporated neoliberal welfare and education policies to high extent in the last few decades. Contrary to the expectation that liberal welfare states would be more inclined to introduce marketization of education (Baggesen Klitgaard 2008; Hicks 2015; Rönnberg 2015a; Wiborg 2015), far-reaching choice reforms in the early 1990s turned the Swedish school system into “one of the world’s most liberal public education systems” (Blomqvist 2004, p. 148). Particularly during the last 15-year period there has been an extremely rapid growth of privately operated but fully tax-funded so called free schools. On average 13 percent of the compulsory school students and 25 percent of the upper secondary school students attend a free school – in sharp contrast to the situation before the 1990s, when only a few percent of Swedish schools were private. In the three biggest cities one-fourth of all compulsory students and 40 to 55 per cent of upper secondary school students attend a free school (Lundahl et al 2013; Lundahl et al. 2014). Nine out of ten free schools are run by corporations that have a right to extract profits from their education activities, and a concentration to a few such actors which “hold large shares of the market” (Skolverket 2014, p. 27) has taken place. Swedish school chains have also moved abroad to market and sell their services and are operating on a global scale (Rönnberg 2015b). Internationally, this Swedish ‘revolution’ of the school system has aroused both astonishment and political interest, and not least the British Conservative party has considered Swedish free-schools as an attractive model (Rönnberg 2015a).
In Sweden, the shift from a universal and egalitarian to a neoliberal market system of education met surprisingly little resistance and few efforts from the Social Democratic Party to change the situation when being in office (Lundahl et al. 2014). In the 2010s, however, strong concerns have been raised over increased segregation and deteriorating academic results, often connected to the decentralization and choice reforms, and certain efforts to reduce and mitigate these and other problems with the “school market” have been conducted. Several government commissions have thus been set up, for instance aiming at stricter ownership regulations and restrictions to extract profit (c.f. SOU 2013:56; SOU 2015:7; Dir. 2014:126; Dir. 2014:91; Dir. 2015:22; Dir 2015:35). Generally all initiatives to weaken the free school choice and impose different restrictions on ownership etc. have however met resistance from various political actors and stakeholders, such as representatives of the Swedish industry and businesses and, not least, the Swedish Association of Independent Schools. These recent developments are however still little researched.
The aim of the paper is to describe, analyse and present some preliminary conclusions concerning Swedish education policies of the 2010s, addressing and sometimes challenging the freedoms of the free school choice and the school market.
The analysis is theoretically informed by an approach in policy analysis asking What’s the Problem represented to be? (Bacchi, 2009; 1999). This approach emphasizes the constructed nature of policy problems and the power relations at play when some issues and actors are incorporated into policy processes while others are left out, thereby framing and legitimizing certain solutions and silencing others.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bacchi, C. L. 1999. Women, Policy and Politics. The Construction of Policy Problems. London: Sage. Bacchi, C. 2009. Analysing Policy. What’s The Problem Represented to be? Frenchs forests: Pearson. Baggesen Klitgaard, M. 2008. School vouchers and the new politics of the welfare state. Governance, 21 (4): 479–498. Blomqvist, P. 2004. The choice revolution: Privatization of Swedish welfare services in the 1990s. Social Policy & Administration, 38 (2): 139–155. Dir. 2014:91. Offentlighetsprincipen i fristående skolor [The principle of public access to official records in independent schools]. Stockholm: Utbildningsdepartementet. Dir. 2014:126. Redovisning av kostnader för skolväsendet på huvudmanna- och skolenhetsnivå m.m. [An account of education costs at provider and school levels]. Stockholm: Utbildningsdepartementet. Dir. 2015:22. Ett nytt regelverk för offentlig finansiering av privat utförda välfärdstjänster [A new legislative framework for public funding of privately provided welfare services]. Stockholm: Utbildningsdepartementet. Dir. 2015:35. Höjd kunskapsnivå och ökad likvärdighet i svensk skola [Raised level of knowledge and strengthened equity in the Swedish schools]. Skolkommissionen 2015. Stockholm: Utbildningsdepartementet. Esping-Andersen, G. 1990. The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge: Polity. Hicks, T. 2015. Inequality, Marketization, and the Left: Schools Policy in England and Sweden. European Journal of Political Research 54(2): 326–342. Lundahl L., I. Erixon-Arreman, A.-S Holm and U. Lundström. 2013. Educational marketization the Swedish way. Education Inquiry 4(3): 497–517. Lundahl L., I. Erixon-Arreman, A.-S Holm and U. Lundström. 2014. Gymnasiet som marknad [Upper secondary education as a market]. Umeå: Boréa. Rönnberg, L. 2015a. Marketization on Export. Representations of the Swedish free school model in English media. European Educational Research Journal, 14(6): 549–565. Rönnberg, L. 2015b. “If anyone sells British education to the Chinese, it will be the Swedes”- Mapping Education Policy Retailers on the Move (Paper presented at ECER in Budapest, Hungary, September 7-11, 2015). Skolverket. 2014. Privata aktörer inom förskola och skola. En kartläggning av enskilda huvudmän och ägare [Private actors in preschools and schools. A survey of private providers and owners]. Rapport 410. Stockholm: Skolverket. SOU 2013:56. Friskolorna i samhället [Free schools in society]. Stockholm: Fritzes. SOU 2015:7. Krav på privata aktörer i välfärden [Demands on private actors in the welfare sector] . Stockholm: Fritzes. Wiborg, S. 2015. Privatizing Education: Free School Policy in Sweden and England. Comparative Education Review 59(3): 473-497.
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