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1 Market forces in Swedish education
Magnus Dahlstedt and Andreas Fejes
Introduction
For a long time, Sweden was known for having a well-developed education system, contributing to social mobility, equality and democratic citizenship (Ball & Larsson, 1989). Such an image still lingers on, despite Sweden falling behind in international comparisons such as PISA as well as in terms of a rapid increase in segregation. Or rather, this image does not connect to the actual state of education in contemporary Sweden. The reasons for the deteriorating results in the PISA rankings are a matter of contestation. One explanation for these developments, which is quite reasonable considering current research on education in Sweden, is the way in which politicians in the early 1990s paved the way for market forces en masse in the Swedish education system. Without any substantial knowledge base, conservative as well social democratic governments since the early 1990s have introduced a range of market-oriented reforms in education, paving the way for the current situation in which anyone (more or less) can start an independent school; there is a free choice of schools for parents and students, as well as possibilities to make a profit from publicly funded education. Thus, the Swedish education system has become one of the most, if not the most, market oriented in the world.
So, how could Sweden with its history of equality and social justice in education end up here? What consequences does the current market-oriented system in education have in terms of equality, democracy and citizenship? How does the current system influence the way education is organised, teachers work, grading and teachersâ relationships with students? This book aims to provide answers to these, as well as other questions pertaining to market forces in education. Our hope is not only that the book and its various contributions will provide knowledge on how market forces have played out in Sweden, but also that such knowledge can provide a substantial basis for lessons in how quickly an education system can fall apart when market forces are allowed to enter en masse.
A global phenomenon
Marketisation and privatisation of education is a global phenomenon (Ball, 2007; Ball & Youdell, 2008; Burch, 2009) that has attracted increased interest in research during the last three decades. Such developments go hand in hand with a changing view about what education is, what education is for, and how education should be shaped. Most education systems in the world have, at least since the 1950s, been concerned with issues of equality, in the name of both economic prosperity and social justice. By investing in education, more people can become educated which is expected to be good for the economy as well as supporting decreased levels of social stratification (see, e.g. Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). The results of such policies differ across countries and contexts. In Sweden, such policies were for a long time quite successful (see, e.g. Ball & Larsson, 1989), up until the 1990s, when market reforms in education were introduced and implemented. However, the introduction of market reforms did not happen in a void but was part of wider neoliberal shifts in education policy across the globe. Still, such shifts came to be more extreme in some locations, one of which was Sweden.
The shift towards neoliberalism in education in Sweden connects up with wider trends. As illustrated in Chapter 5, the Organisation for economic development (OECD) has been an influential actor in many policy areas, not least education, promoting market liberalism. Sweden has been quite involved in OECD activities and is part of the major assessment programmes, most recently PISA and PIAAC. Another influential actor has been the EU. Even though the EU does not have any mandate in terms of educational policies, its agenda on lifelong learning has been picked up and mobilised in a Swedish context. As we have illustrated elsewhere (see, e.g. Fejes, 2006, 2010; Fejes & Dahlstedt, 2013; Fejes et al., 2018), such a lifelong learning agenda is very much shaped within a wider neoliberal notion of governing. Here, education is seen as an investment whose rewards can be evaluated in terms of increased growth and international competitiveness. As such, the focus of education has increasingly been directed towards employability, i.e. so that citizens can become employable and well adapted to the constantly changing needs and expectations of the labour market. Competitiveness thus emerges as the more or less overall objective of education, an ideal which individuals, as well as nations, are supposed to strive for. The meaning and role of education thereby changes, from being seen as a fundamental social right to being seen as a commodity, a product on the market offered to individuals in their search for skills and competences considered necessary at a given time, nationally as well as internationally (Dahlstedt & Harling, 2017). Such changing views of education also change the way the role of public institutions is seen â from one of planning, organising and delivering services, to one that follows up and evaluates the services provided (see, e.g. Fejes, 2006; Ball & Youdell, 2008).
How did Sweden end up here? What made such developments possible?
Towards a new Swedish model?
Since the Second World War, the Swedish education system has undergone major changes. Education was a cornerstone of the âSwedish modelâ, the social democratic welfare model that emerged in Sweden in the post-war period (Esping-Andersen, 1990). The Swedish model emphasised employment, including government intervention to secure demand, and active labour market policies. This particular welfare model was based on the principles of centralism and universalism, social intervention and consensus (Rothstein, 1998).
The mode of governing in the Swedish model was primarily state-centric (Dahlstedt, 2009a). It consisted of making the state the primary agent that forms, guides and controls events and people, based on uniform welfare policies. Thus, one of the main principles guiding the operations of the state in the traditional Swedish model was that of social intervention. The state had the legitimacy as well as the authority to intervene in the social body. This principle was closely interrelated with the notion of social engineering, according to which the governing of society was seen as being based on social planning, expertise and scientific knowledge (Larsson et al., 2012).
As part of the Swedish welfare model, the organisation of the education system rested on the principles of non-segregation, social levelling, equality, general citizen-competence and public responsibility for education (Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000). An overarching objective of education policy in the Swedish model was to gradually level out social and economic hierarchies and thereby counteract the most polarising effects of the market. Swedish education policy was dominated by a conception of education as a âpublic goodâ (Englund, 1996). In such an education policy, every individual should be guaranteed the right to equal education, conceptualised and institutionally underpinned as a fundamental social right. Generally, the Swedish education system was successful in contributing to equality in terms of educational attainment as well as social mobility (Ball & Larsson, 1989).
However, the education system in Sweden was highly debated in the 1970s. According to the main criticisms, the central regulation of the schools had the following shortcomings: it did not take the local level into consideration; it did not involve citizens in the decision-making process; there was a lack of effectiveness in terms of learning, financing and organisation caused by centralisation (Wahlström, 2002; BorĂ©us, 1994; Hugemark, 1994). In response to such criticism, the Swedish model has, since the 1980s, witnessed a gradual shift towards a model shaped by more neoliberal governmental rationalities (Larsson et al., 2012), emphasising individual autonomy, initiative and freedom of choice vis-Ă -vis governmental control, state intervention and endeavours to achieve equality and the redistribution of societal resources (Ryner, 2002; Lindvall, 2004; Junestav, 2004; Schierup et al., 2015). With this shift, the notion of active citizenship has become part of the mainstream policy discourse in a number of different arenas â for instance, education policy (Carlbaum, 2012), labour market policy (Vesterberg, 2016; Larsson, 2015) and social policy (Jönsson, 2015; Lauri, 2016). Here, active citizenship has primarily focused on âactivatingâ and fostering citizens into taking responsibility for themselves and for including themselves in society (cf. Dahlstedt, 2009b, 2015).
Since the 1990s, individual and private policies have gradually replaced collective and public welfare policies. A variety of domains were privatised and citizens were thus provided with the possibility of choosing from a wide range of welfare providers â not least in terms of education, care and pensions â in order to meet their own welfare needs (Larsson et al., 2012).
Education as a private good?
This shift has had a strong impact on education. From having been regarded as a âpublic goodâ, education has developed into being construed as a âprivate goodâ (Englund, 1996; Labaree, 1997). The focus has gradually shifted towards individual choice, parental responsibility for education, efficiency and competition, together with the development of individual competence as guiding principles in education. An increased emphasis on the principle of freedom of choice, for example, was a central feature of the education reforms implemented in the 1990s. The principle of equality, in the sense of equal outcomes, was gradually replaced by the principle of equity, in the sense of opportunities (Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000). Three central reforms during the early 1990s are of specific interest here. Firstly, in 1991, on the initiative of the social democratic government, there was a shift from the state as the funder of education to the municipalities. Management by objective was introduced, where each municipality was responsible for funding schools as well as municipal adult education (MAE), and for achieving the objectives set by the state in legislation and the curriculum. Through a national agency, the state then performed follow-ups to make sure each municipality delivered what was required. Secondly, the charter school reform introduced by the conservative government in 1992 turned the entire compulsory and upper secondary school system in Sweden into a quasi-market, where each student and parent had (and still has) the opportunity to choose which school to attend (either a school run by the municipality or an independent school) and where the municipality was obliged to send a voucher to the school at which the student was enrolled (Lundahl et al., 2013). Thirdly, rather than the voucher system, a procurement system was introduced in MAE in the mid-1990s, meaning that municipalities could decide to procure their adult education courses from private companies, folk high schools or study associations.
When summarising the main lines of development in Swedish education over the past decades, one can thus say that during this period, a significant change in the ways in which education is construed has occurred, in terms of both its design and its role in society. From essentially having been construed as a collective project, with the means to redistribute resources and to deal with socio-economic divisions, education has increasingly come to be construed as a commodity, and as an individual project, with an increasing emphasis on individual choice and responsibility (Olson, 2008).
The Swedish education market today
The charter school reform opened up possibilities for parents and students to choose which school they wished to attend. Today, for example, a student enrolled at upper secondary school can choose any school in Sweden. Further, the charter school reform makes it possible for independent schools (run and owned by for-profit and non-profit actors) to establish themselves. For each student registered with a school, a publicly funded voucher is distributed. In practice, this reform has made it possible for private actors to make a profit from engaging in the delivery of public education. Anyone who wishes to start a school has to apply to the Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE) and thus fulfil a certain number of basic criteria. In addition, the municipality where the school wishes to launch its business can provide comments on how such an establishment would influence the economy as well as the education system in the municipality. However, a municipality cannot stop the establishment of an independent school. If accepted by the SNAE, the municipality must pay the same voucher to the new independent school as to any other school in the municipality. As illustrated in Chapter 2, this means that municipalities will be dealing with the various effects of the establishment of independent schools rather than dealing with the establishment of independent schools as such. Accordingly, for the local political actors, issues of school choice and the establishment of independent schools becomes seemingly non-political, issues that only politicians working at the national level can deal with.
At the time when the charter school reform was introduced, and during the first decade of its operation, many students were registered with an independent school. However, by the turn of the century, an increase was detected. While 1.1% of compulsory school students attended an independent school in 1992, in 2017, the figure was 14.9%. For upper secondary schools, 26.5% of all students attended an independent school in 2017 (statistics from SNAE). Turning to MAE, when the procurement system was introduced in the mid-1990s, 15% of the course participants attended courses delivered by non-public educational providers; in 2017, the figure was 45% (statistics from SNAE; see also Fejes et al., 2016). In 2016, there were 800 independent schools at compulsory school level (from first to ninth grade) and most of these independent schools are run by large companies (Dahlstedt & Trumberg, 2017). The freedom of choice and the emergence of regional school markets have meant that market principles now dictate how education is organised and valued (Bunar & Sernhede, 2013).
School choice, inequality and segregation
A key issue addressed in research on the highly marketised Swedish education system has been the consequences of the free school choice. Here, there is also a great deal of research internationally (e.g. van Zanten & Kosunen, 2013; Dumay & Dupriez, 2014). On a general level, research on the Swedish system concurs with what is known elsewhere. With a free school choice, parents and students choose schools with students who they themselves identify with (Bunar & Ambrose, 2018; Forsberg, 2018). Thus, there has been an increase in segregation between schools and between students, with the free school choice reinforcing existing differences and inequalities (SNAE, 2006, 2011; Trumberg, 2011). The growth in the number of independent schools has led to increased competition for both students and staff, particularly in large urban areas, with both public and independent schools compelled to operate as companies, using marketing to attract the ârightâ students, i.e. those with the most resources (Ăsth et al., 2013; Böhlmark et al., 2015; Forsberg, 2015). As a result, since the 1990s, schools have become increasingly homogeneous in terms of family income, social class of parents and ethno-cultural background (Trumberg, 2011).
As illustrated in Chapters 2â4, public schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods as well as in the countryside lose students to independent schools and public schools located elsewhere, thus draining these schools of funds. With the draining of students and funds from public schools in disadvantaged areas, as illustrated in Chapter 2, municipalities and public schools have been more or less forced to play the market game, which for some school leaders is a contradiction in terms, i.e. on the one hand they wish to defend values of the importance of equality, while on the other hand they must support and sustain a market-based system. The big private companies running most of the independent schools, as illustrated in Chapter 3, show little or no interest in engaging in delivering some of the...
