Sweden has a long tradition of comprehensive upper-secondary education. This began in the early 1970s. It culminated in 1994 with all the programmes having a core curriculum that gave general eligibility to higher education. Conservative and liberal governments have introduced several neoliberal school reforms, which the subsequent social…

A demand on national economies in the 1970s was that they should begin to increase their labour market flexibility, which came to mean transferring risks and insecurity onto workers. Education was one way to prepare future workers for this new situation. The present article examines this preparation of learning for precarity some 40 years on. It…

By exploiting an extensive pilot scheme that preceded an educational reform, this paper evaluates the effects of introducing a more comprehensive upper secondary school system in Sweden. The reform reduced the differences between academic and vocational tracks through prolonging and increasing the academic content of the latter. As a result, all…

A 1991 study tour to Germany, Denmark, and Sweden investigated youth education and training policies, systems, methods of financing, and programs. Concerns were integration of academic and practical skills training, assessment of student competencies for employment, expectations and outcomes of employment preparation for all youth, and system…