Swedish compulsory schools are committed to work for equality and social cohesion. Increasing school segregation, however, challenges this commitment. Based on survey data from Swedish municipalities, this article maps and analyses local initiatives that counteract school segregation. We identify three main types of initiatives--reinforcement,…

The article aims to depict the political framing of three grading reforms in Swedish compulsory school, in terms of the political problem they are supposed to solve and what kind of attention is given to the lowest performing pupils. Discourse analysis is employed, focusing on statement producers. The empirical material consists of policy…

The United Nations (UN) asserts that children and young people should have access to human rights education (HRE) and that schools are one of the key means through which HRE should be made available. However, there is currently limited knowledge about the presence and form of HRE in school contexts, and there is no established means through which…

Analysis of Swedish educational policy will start the importance of some state commissions on education. The first one was published in 1946 (SOU, 1948:27) and the second in 2017 (SOU, 2017:35). The first commission's main aim was to form democratic citizens, while the second focused on equity in learning opportunities. Both state commissions had…

This chapter is dealing with transitions in the governing of schooling in Sweden. Referring to uses of different dominating governing models, four periods were identified since the WW2, first a centralizing reformation period (1950-1980), followed by decentralizing realization period (1980-1990), and then a deregulating restructuration period…

Education reforms that entail increased emphasis on high-stakes testing, assessment and grading have spread across education systems in recent decades. Critics have argued that these policies could have consequences for stress, identity, self-esteem and the overall health of pupils. However, these potentially negative consequences have rarely been…

Global trends inspired by neo-liberal tendencies have influenced developments in the Swedish school system. A flurry of educational reforms over the last decades have rapidly transformed the municipal school arena into a market in which independent, for-profit schools have expanded and school segregation has increased. This article examines…

This book offers an original contribution to the area of international research on comparative education policies and the influence of transnational agencies on national school policy and reform. With a focus on grasping what "the Nordic model" or "the Nordic dimension" means in school and educational policy, the book explores…

Discursively learning outcomes have been embedded within an education-policy context characterised by a shift from teaching to learning. In the dominant education policy discourse, learning outcomes have come to play an important role in education whose emphasis is more on product than process, which by its critics have been characterised as…

This book identifies the cultural and moral foundations of country-specific educational governance and school leadership and presents the principles of justice and the diversity of common goods that guide leadership practices in schools. It contributes to an existing research field that studies diversity and ethical leadership in schools. The…

This article analyses a specific part of the actions taken to improve the quality of Swedish education, namely the expectations formulated in national policy documents for the quality work that local authorities, schools and teachers are supposed to undertake. For the empirical analysis of how these expectations have changed over the last two…

Recent reforms in England and the USA give evidence that teaching methods and content can change rapidly, given a strong external pressure, for example through economic incentives, inspections, school choice, and public display of schools' and pupils' performances. Educational activities in the Scandinavian countries have increasingly become…

School inspection has formed part of both English and Swedish approaches to governing education for some time now. But latterly due to the neo liberal drive for educational excellence, both countries have remodelled their inspector workforce. Using Jacobsson's theory of governance as a regulative, meditative and inquisitive activity, this chapter…

Auditing, accountability, and transparency are concepts that greatly impact the working conditions of today's public sector professionals, including teachers. Documentation requirements have been on the increase for some time, which can be seen in the education sector's Individual Development Plans (IDPs), for example. These IDPs are pedagogical…

It has been widely documented that accountability systems, including school inspections, bring with them unintended side effects. These unintended effects are often negative and have the potential to undo the intended positive effects. However the empirical evidence is limited. Through a European comparative study we have had the rare opportunity…