Ulf Lundström

Educational marketization the Swedish way

Sweden has commonly been regarded as a striking example of a social democratic welfare-state regime (Esping-Andersen 1996), characterized by strong state governance and active involvement in welfare matters. In the last two decades, however, the Swedish public sector and education system have been radically and extensively transformed in a neo-liberal direction, a move that was preceded by extensive decentralization of decision-making from the state to municipalities and schools. In this article the scope, character and some of the consequences of internal and external marketization of Swedish education in the early 2000s are summarized, and the impact of competition on the internal workings of upper secondary schools is highlighted in particular. We conclude that the external marketization of education has proceeded a long way and Sweden also fully embraces new public management, i.e. ‘inner marketization’, of education in most respects. However, aspects of the older social democratic policy paradigm are still visible with regard to the assigned functions, values and governance of education.

Evaluation systems in a crowded policy space: Implications for local school governance

Evaluation systems of various types are an integral part of a countrys education policy space, within which they are supposed to have the basic functions of enhancing accountability and supporting school development. Here we argue that in a crowded policy space evaluation systems may interfere with each other in a way that can have unintended consequences and create new ‘policies by the way’ that are not the result of intentional policy decisions. To shed light on this argument, we examine five of approximately 30 evaluation systems operating in the Swedish education system. Our analysis examines a situation in which many evaluation systems are doing almost the same thing, i.e. collecting a similar and limited set of quantitative data, and addressing the same local governance actors with the primary goal of supporting school development in the same direction. By doing so, these evaluation systems could thus give rise to several unintended consequences, including a scaling down of the school law and curriculum, multiple accountability problems, increased administration and new intermediary job functions at the level of local education governance.

“Living with Market Forces” Principals’ Perceptions of Market Competition in Swedish Upper Secondary School Education

The Swedish education system has undergone major restructuring since the early 1990s. The new policy, including e.g. decentralisation, accountability, school choice and a tax-funded voucher system, has led to an expanding “school market” .This article explores how upper secondary school principals perceive the increased competition among schools and its impact on their work and the school organisation. The data emanate from interviews with principals at eight schools in five municipalities. The presence of the market in everyday work is perceived as a reality, even if its significance varies. The principals argue that competition increases the staff’s efforts and improves school development. However, it is also perceived as problematic since it causes increased stress and uncertainty. The principals’ professional identities seem to have changed from a pedagogical role to a more economics ditto. Most principals are pragmatic and make efforts to handle the new policy context the best they can.

Teachers’ Perceptions of Individual Performance-related Pay in Practice: A Picture of a Counterproductive pay System

This article describes and discusses Swedish upper-secondary teachers’ perceptions of the effects of individual performance-related pay (PRP) in the context of educational restructuring and governance. The empirical data were generated through semi-structured interviews of 23 teachers. Power’s distinction between programmatic and technological elements of audit is used as a frame of reference for the problematization of the pay system. The findings demonstrate a wide gap between the programmatic goals and their fulfilment in practice. The ability of the pay system to deliver its main objective, to enhance motivation by rewarding good performance, is questioned. The performance assessment criteria are neither well known nor motivate the teachers, and they perceive the appraisal as arbitrary and unfair, with a tendency to reward work of peripheral significance. Employers and teachers are supposed to engage in salary-setting dialogues, but in some cases these dialogues are neglected, and when they do occur the employers frequently do not explain how the quality of their performance is appraised. Implications for the teaching profession are discussed. The study indicates that the PRP system contributes to a shift from occupational to organizational professionalism and challenges a common work culture.

Maximising Opportunity and Minimising Risk? Young People’s Upper Secondary School Choices in Swedish Quasi-markets

This article explores young people’s upper secondary school choices after recent reforms of school choice and competition in Sweden, drawing on interviews with students and school staff. The respondents identify important motives and strategies in students’ school choices, for example, the character of school and schooling, the influence of marketing and education policy, as well as young people’s identities and positions. Young people’s ‘horizons of action’ and decision-making seem to vary, according inter alia to the degree of urbanity of their geographical locality and exposure to competition. Gender-, ethnicity- and social class-related factors also appear to be influential. We conclude that the school choice and competition reforms draw schools’ attention to students’ preferences, but the motive for the interest seems to have little to do with a concern to help young people to make educational school choices and future school-to-work transitions. Finally, we advocate modifications in the provision of career information and guidance.

Managing Inclusion in Competitive School Systems: The Cases of Sweden and England.

The last 40 years have seen great political attention paid to issues of inclusion in education, both from international organisations and also individual nations. This flexible concept has been adopted enthusiastically in education reforms concerned with increased standardisation of teaching and learning, decentralisation of education management, reduced teacher autonomy and marketisation of school systems. This paper draws from a research project that explores inclusion as part of the education transformations in England and Sweden. These two countries have been very different in their state governance and welfare regimes, but have been following similar directions of reform in their education systems. The paper evaluates the changing policy assumptions and values in relation to inclusion in the schooling changes of the last few decades, through an analysis of policy contexts and processes, and a presentation of selected empirical material from research in the two countries. We argue that, despite the similar dominant discourses of competition and marketisation, the two education systems draw on significantly different paradigms of operationalising inclusion, with distinct outcomes regarding equality.

Navigating the Evaluation Web: Evaluation in Swedish Local School Governance

This paper explores the use, functions and constitutive effects of evaluation systems in local school governance, and identifies how contextual factors affect various uses of evaluation in this context. This case study of three Swedish municipalities demonstrates that local evaluation systems are set up to effectively sustain local school governance and ensure compliance with the Education Act and other state demands. Local decision makers have learned to navigate the web of evaluations and developed response strategies to manage external evaluations and to take into account what can be useful and what cannot be overlooked in order to avoid sanctions. The study shows that in contexts with high issue polarisation, such as schooling, the use of evaluation differs between the political majority and opposition, and relates to how schools perform in national comparisons and school inspections. Responses to external evaluations follow the same pattern. Some key performance indicators from the National Agency of Education and the School Inspectorate affect local school governance in that they define what is important in education, and reinforce the norm that benchmarking is natural and worthwhile, indicating constitutive effects of national evaluation systems.

Teacher autonomy in the era of New Public Management

This article examines how upper secondary school teachers perceive and respond to the consequences for their professional autonomy of recent school reforms and restructurings. Based on empirical material from interviews of 119 teachers in three studies conducted between 2002 and 2014, the findings indicate that teacher autonomy has been reduced by school reforms and restructurings since the late 1980s. Regardless of their individual aims, these reforms have collectively created a power structure that distributes power to the state, municipalities, principals and the school market, including ‘customers’, that is, students, at the expense of teacher autonomy. Teacher agency follows certain policies at the discourse level, such as decentralisation and management by objectives and results, but in practice seems to be based on individuals’ and groups’ capacities to exploit opportunities for agency in combination with more or less facilitative management and organisation cultures. This development is multifaceted and varies locally, but the overall trend can be described as a shift from occupational to organisational professionalism and from ‘licensed’ to ‘regulated’ autonomy but emphasising the influence of market logics.

Balancing managerial and professional demands: school principals as evaluation brokers

The evaluation trend in the global education field implies new professional challenges for school principals. The purpose of this article is to describe and analyse Swedish school principals’ experiences of prevailing evaluations and the implications for the profession. Specifically, we examine: a) how principals respond to evaluations and their consequences in their schools; and b) the implications of the evaluations for the profession in light of professional responsibility and accountability. The interviewed principals are ascribed huge evaluation responsibilities and are in this respect key actors but to some extent are also ‘victims’ of external pressures. All schools are embedded in a web of evaluation systems. They share the view that evaluations that are useful for improving teaching, student achievement and everyday school life are those conducted close to practice, and involve teachers. Most of them are also aware of the risks for the reduction of the broad goals of schooling and for work overload. The principals express a desire to protect the fundamental values of professional responsibility but the total demands of the local evaluation web have involved a shift in their professional role towards professional accountability.

Local safety policy: The approach of two Swedish cities to urgent safety problems:

This article explores local safety policy (LSP) developed to resolve urgent safety problems in two Swedish municipalities. It shows that local safety actors conceive and construct safety problems in ways that make them manageable, and that LSP evolves as a web of interactions between safety actors in the public and private sectors. The actors use established safety solutions and routines while exploring new ways of managing the problems. The municipalities’ problem-solving structures differ mainly in that different actors and institutions are involved. The policy process and features of LSP correspond well to how policy is portrayed in other cross-sectoral policy domains. Local safety policy development cannot easily be separated from policy implementation, nor can safety policy be separated from safety work, for they evolve together. The implication of this study for governance is that policy workers at different levels and from different organisations create LSP. Although LSP is partly initiated and legitimised at the political–administrative level, it is not from this level that it evolves.