A moderate politician told us that the problem with the Swedish school before the free school reform and municipalization in the 90s was that it made all students succeed too well and evenly. According to him, the burghers wanted it to be easier for the children of the burghers to succeed and harder for the children of the poor. Free school choice succeeded in this. At the cost of average school results and the general level of knowledge collapsing for all classes of society.
There was the possibility to study in free schools for a low or small cost even before the free school reform in high-bourgeois schools such as Rudebecks in Gothenburg as well as in more alternative schools such as Waldorf schools. The independent school reform did not lead to an increase in funding for such high-quality independent schools, but only to a segregation and commercialization of the school where high school grades were prioritized over teachers' conditions and salaries and over a high level of knowledge in the independent schools.
All students succeed better if strong and weak students are mixed in the same class, the pedagogical research shows, and its thesis is strengthened by how school results have gone after the increasing segregation.
In order for the schools to become more equal, all social classes must increasingly live less segregated. This could be achieved through a million-dollar program for cheap, good, beautiful and visually varied rental apartments, but the new neighborhoods would also have significant elements of condominiums and single-family homes. In this way, the new quarters could attract more people from all social groups.
If at the same time society focused on the fact that the economic differences would be small in society and that there were jobs for everyone with a good and safe working environment for everyone thanks to strengthened labor legislation and an expanded public sector, then all social groups would feel better. Then the incentive for those who reached further in their career to segregate themselves from those who were proud workers, unemployed and on sick leave would decrease.
It is also to the advantage of careerists to have more ordinary people in the same field. It can be incredibly stressful in a high-status area to feel less successful just because you didn't go the farthest, even if you went far. At the same time, in a socially mixed neighbourhood, it can inspire those from a vulnerable background to see that it is possible to work your way up.
Then another experience from previous million-dollar programs is that the first floors must be reserved for community premises and businesses so that the streets do not become dark and scary at night.
In the previously more egalitarian Sweden, the general knowledge level and school results in school were higher. That's where we should want to go again through a review of the free school reform and by building a society for everyone again.