“Competition for students harms schools”
Translated from Swedish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
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Context piece
- Three researchers argue that Sweden’s school debate focuses too narrowly on ownership and should examine competition for students itself.
- Their study of a municipal upper-secondary school found segregation, grade pressure and student sorting despite the absence of a private competitor for many years.
- They say current proposals from the government, Social Democrats and Liberals would not fully address the broader market-driven model.
The problem with Sweden’s “market school” system runs deeper than who owns a school, three researchers argue in a debate article published before the September 13 election.
Their new study follows a municipal upper-secondary school over two decades, beginning with its foundation in 2005. The school had no shareholders and initially faced no direct private-school competitor, yet the researchers say it still encouraged grade competition and helped sort the municipality’s young people by social background.
The school was designed as a competitor from the outset. The municipality expected private providers to establish themselves and attract high-performing students, as had already happened in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Nearly every founding decision reflected that expectation.
The school was built as a competitor.
The school sought to appeal to academically experienced students. Its flagship natural sciences programme had limited places, which pushed up admission scores. The first principal recruited teachers from a school undergoing reorganisation. The private competitors the school had been built to confront did not arrive until 2021.
Competition nevertheless began immediately, because the new school competed with two municipal schools offering overlapping programmes. Both saw their admission scores fall before responding with their own reorganisations. The first principal was initially denied access to municipal principals’ meetings. Once admitted, he encountered school leaders who, in his words, acted like independent business owners watching their best teachers and students being drained away.
The researchers say the case shows how a municipality placed its own schools in competition with one another while preparing for an opponent that did not yet exist. They accept that profit withdrawals could be restricted and ownership structures reviewed, but argue that such measures alone would leave the market model intact after the election.
They acted like independent business owners who saw their best teachers and students being drained away.
About this summary
Originally published by Svenska Dagbladet in Swedish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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