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.

background

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The Market Comes to Education in Sweden

Educational marketization the Swedish way

A policy of school choice has, in various shapes, been implemented in educational systems across the world during the last decades. Drawing on various empirical and theoretical sources, the aim of ...

Choosing for quality or inequality: current perspectives on the implementation of school choice policy in Sweden

Introduction PART I THE MACROECONOMICS OF EDUCATION 1. Theory and Facts PART A- EDUCATION PRIORITIES: GROWTH VS. COHESION 2. Cohesion and the Supply of General Skills in Europe 3. Higher Education, Innovation, and Growth PART B- THE MARGINS OF IMPROVEMENT IN EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: SKILL MISMATCH, SKILL PORTABILITY, AND MOBILITY 4. Internal Mobility, Skills, and Education 5. Skill Mismatch and Over-qualification in the Enlarged Europe 6. Specificity of Skills and Reallocation 7. Policy Implications PART II WORKPLACE TRAINING IN EUROPE 8. Introduction 9. An Overview of the Theoretical Framework 10. Stylised Facts About Workplace Training 11. Training and Labour Market Institutions 12. The Costs and Benefits of Workplace Training 13. Is There Scope for Policy? Final Remarks

Education and Training in Europe

We ask whether growing up with persons of the same national background (which we refer to as coethnics), in the immediate neighbourhood, influences future educational careers of children of immigra ...

/pdf/ethnic-environment-during-childhood-and-the-educational-1nrdbj71i0.pdf

Ethnic Environment During Childhood and the Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children in Sweden

This paper adopts Chadwick and Solon’s (2002) model by using family earnings in the study of intergenerational earnings mobility with a highlight on the role of assortative mating. I analyze mean and quantile regression coefficients as well as transition matrices to investigate family earnings mobility between parents and daughters, and parents and sons from Swedish register data. My findings indicate that Sweden has a higher degree of mobility compared to the U.S., and that assortative mating also plays an important role as a channel through which income status is transmitted across generations in Sweden. However, the difference in intergenerational mobility patterns between the two countries does not, inherently, depend on factors that affect the marriage match. Swedish daughters and sons exhibit a rather similar scheme of intergenerational earnings transmission. Daughters tend to be slightly more mobile than sons and the difference between their elasticity estimates is small but statistically significant. The quantile regression approach reveals that parents’ family earnings are less important as explanatory variable at the upper end of the children’s earnings distribution than it is at the bottom while transition matrices show substantial earnings persistence in the top earnings class.

/pdf/intergenerational-earnings-mobility-among-daughters-and-sons-5dednv6nj4.pdf

The Market Comes to Education in Sweden

Citations

Educational marketization the Swedish way

Choosing for quality or inequality: current perspectives on the implementation of school choice policy in Sweden

Education and Training in Europe

Ethnic Environment During Childhood and the Educational Attainment of Immigrant Children in Sweden

Intergenerational Earnings Mobility Among Daughters and Sons: Evidence from Sweden and a Comparison with the United States ∗

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