Governmental reforms since the early 1990s have acted as a push factor for starting new schools in Sweden and have created options for pupils to choose a school irrespective of municipal borders. This study highlights the upper secondary school system in small municipalities in northern Sweden since the late 1990s. The analysis shows that the…

During recent decades, the rise of the global economy launched a wide array of social, economic, and political changes in nations throughout the world. Heightened concern about the quality of schools launched what is arguably the most pervasive, intense, and protracted attempts at educational reform in recent history. Examinations of the…

In this paper, we survey the UK-based literature on school structures and school autonomy to identify settings in which alternative and more autonomous school arrangements can improve the educational attainments of pupils in the bottom tail of the achievement distribution. We also present new evidence on the effect of school academies on the…

This article analyses reforms addressing and affecting the curriculum and organisation of Swedish upper secondary education over 40 years, up to an initiative by the present non-socialist government. The aim is to analyse the current reform of upper secondary education and relate it to previous reforms during a 40-year period in terms of…

During the last three decades Swedish education has undergone radical decentralisation involving increased school autonomy. One aspect of this change is the gradual weakening of the state regulation of teaching time. Thus, Sweden is somewhat of an extreme in the EU. This is accentuated by a five-year experiment, where 900 compulsory schools were…

The current methods of student evaluation are of doubtful value. An adequate substitute needs to be found. (CK)

From the early 1960s there have been organized attempts in Sweden to carry on decentralized innovative work in education through local multiproject development schemes. Features of the schemes are described and analyzed. (RM)

To analyze organizational development of Swedish universities and colleges, decision theory and implementation theory were examined. Attention was directed to the following models of decision-making: the demographic model, the incremental model, the garbage-can model, and the political model. The focus was on system decision-making, and empirical…

Sweden is undergoing a school decentralization process from a formerly centralized system. This report examines how school personnel are adapting to the changes. Schoolteachers, administrators, and staff members were interviewed, and, where appropriate, responses were coded for numerical assessment. Additional data include school-reform plans for…

General reform in the admission requirements, curriculum, organization, and location of Swedish higher education institutions is described. (DE)

Approaches to analyze the reform of higher education in Sweden, and particularly the organization of studies in higher education, are considered. Three starting points are as follows: examining the intentions constituting the background to the present organization of studies, considering continuing developments and attitudes toward problems; and…

Educational organizations, this paper asserts, are best described using a neorationalist model, which analyzes organizations as social instruments, acknowledges structural conflict, and views individuals as active participants. The paper examines traditional and modern rationalist organization theories and contrasts these with systems theory; it…

Swedish higher education is discussed with attention to reforms, the structure of higher education, study programs, entrance requirement and admissions, postgraduate studies, economic resources, student unions, and student financial aid. Educational reform created a unified higher education system, combining institutions that had previously been…

The rationale behind the traditional grade organization pattern of pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary is discussed, as is the trend to extend compulsory schooling later into the teenage years. The impact of these divisions and of compulsory schooling itself on equal educational opportunity is considered. (SJL)

In 1984, the Swedish National Board of Education inaugurated a major research program on decentralized school administration. The research undertaken at the University of Lund focused upon regional and local school administration: county education committee, local education authority, local education office, and head teachers. Results are…