Few can have avoided the school debate of recent years. School results in Sweden have dropped drastically since the beginning 2000s. However, until 1991, the school was a state affair. So we also had very good results. After municipalisation, the Riksdag opened up to private profits. Sweden is now unique in the world in allowing unregulated profit withdrawals.
The municipalities as well as the independent schools swear free. But everyone seems to agree that the results need to be improved. A battery of measures has been proposed: from cellphone bans to increased competition with independent schools. Will these measures have the intended effect? Our answer is that the main problem is not primarily the question of order. The order problems have arisen because of a more strictly segregated school and an increasingly unequal society. A school that also competes with joint-stock companies that extract profits from our tax money. That is where we have to start by putting measures in place. The Norwegian School Board writes in the report "What affects the results in Swedish primary school: overview of knowledge about the importance of various factors:
"The National Education Agency shows in its report that increased differences in results during the 1990s coincide with changes in the structure of the school system and increased socio-economic differences. The changes can be categorized into four structural categories; segregation, decentralization, differentiation and individualization.”
Representative of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences writes in DN:
"Remake our schools so that they become equal, without the current market-driven (and often populist-influenced) profiling in different directions. Segregation within the school system must be countered as far as possible. The possibility of conducting school activities for profit should be eliminated.”
Let the state again become the head of the Swedish school and thereby increase equality. Let the tax money go back to the school and not to profits. Let Swedish students and teachers get the school they deserve: a safe school with good conditions for everyone who works in it.
PS. The Social Democrat Carl Lindberg, assistant State Secretary in the Department of Education 1994-2004, has written a thought-provoking debate article on school development in recent decades. You will find it here.