We study whether autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools, affect student achievement and school segregation across 15 countries over 16 years. Our triple-differences regressions exploit between-grade variation in the share of students attending autonomous schools within a given…

Distributed leadership focuses on what teachers and school leaders do together, but also on how the situation mediates that interaction. This paper focuses on the importance and function of the situational dimension of practice. By framing situational aspects in terms of local educational infrastructure, it explores organizational components in…

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are a new but rapidly growing addition to the Swedish school work force. This study sought to inventory the employment and work task characteristics of school-based SLPs to assess equitable access to SLP services. Method: We collected questionnaires from 111 SLPs currently practicing in Swedish schools.…

Organizational building is essential if school leaders are to promote school improvement, but it can be difficult to combine with school leaders' requirements to satisfy teachers' personal and relational needs. The the aim of this study is to explore critical aspects when combining organizational building with requirements to satisfy teachers'…

This report seeks to explore some of the reasons Sweden developed an independent school sector dominated by for-profit schools by drawing on prior scholarship and reports as well interview material from Swedish school entrepreneurs, researchers, and prior public representatives that helped create and implement the Swedish voucher program. This…

While school choice and marketisation have been studied extensively, some areas remain under-researched, for instance, the consequences of choice for the development of inclusive education. The aim of this article is to illustrate the consequences of school choice for inclusive education, as it relates to special education, using Sweden as a case…

"Neoliberalism and Market Forces in Education" provides a wide perspective on the dramatic transformation of education policy in Sweden that has taken place during the last 30 years, with a specific focus on marketization. The marketization of education in Sweden is set in the wider international context of changes in education systems.…

This regional dossier aims to provide a concise description of the European minority language, Sámi in Sweden, in education. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects such as the number of schools,…

This article focuses on the interplay between the concepts of 'educational infrastructure' and 'organisational memory'. Using data from collaboration between a Swedish university and a local municipality, the article draws attention to the interplay between three nation-wide improvement programmes and their educational infrastructures, and the…

The Eurydice network has been collecting data on instruction time for more than two decades. These data have been published in many Eurydice publications, notably all editions of the 'Key data on Education'. Since 2010, annually updated data on instruction time has been available on the Eurydice website. Since 2013, the Eurydice network has been…

This article focuses on the role of the state in the context of an increasing market orientation in Swedish education policy. It asks if and how a market orientation and privatisation can be reconciled with attempts to reestablish central output control. The controlling function of the state is emphasised in the form of efforts to inspect both…

Profiles three Swedish tuition-free, independent public schools. Independent schools were formed after the Swedish government enacted school choice legislation in 1992 resulting in the replacement of private schools with a system of tuition-free, self-managed public schools. These schools (now over 800) provide parents with alternatives to…

Leading researchers from the United States and Europe report on new findings on the effect of education on equal opportunity, using economic and statistical techniques to assess the results of education policy reform in countries including the United States, Britain, Sweden, Germany, and Italy. Much educational research today is focused on…

Government policy on public support for private schools in Sweden, the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, France and Malta, and Canada is reviewed. In Sweden virtually all schools are government schools funded by local and national grants; only a handful of private schools exist and they receive no government funds. The United…

Examines national experiences with educational vouchers in Chile and Sweden in relation to commonly held assumptions of proponents and opponents. Finds that vouchers did not improve academic achievement; "flight from public education" was related to prior lack of public support for public education; increased choice primarily benefited…