Lisbeth Lundahl
Department of Education, Umeå University
Sweden
For better or for worse?
Social implications of changed education governance in Sweden: Views of policy actors
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, Edinburgh, 20th–23rd September 2000
Introduction
Is it reasonable to argue that different governing strategies for education will have implications in terms of social exclusion (or integration) in society?[1] This is without doubt a very complex matter, as it includes a series of questions, each of which requires a separate analysis at a given time and in a specific social context. What is meant by social exclusion and inclusion and by whom? Which changes in patterns of social exclusion and inclusion are identified? Which are the functions and importance of education in reproducing old and/or creating new patterns of social exclusion and inclusion? Do changes of governance affect the role of education in this respect, and how?
Shifts of goals, means and paradigms
The reformation and expansion of Swedish primary and secondary education in the post-war period was characterised by strivings of equality and uniformity to a high degree. Regardless of their social or geographical origin, children were supposed to go to schools of equal and high standards, and young people should have equal opportunities to continue to higher education. The big educational reforms of the 9-year comprehensive school (1962) and upper-secondary school, where academic and vocational courses and programs were put under the same organisational umbrella (1971), were framed by strong and detailed State governance. Schools and teaching were thus regulated and controlled through national curricula and syllabi, by a variety of specially destined State subsidies and a vast number of other regulations concerning resources, organisation, staff and daily work.
The education reforms in the 1940s – 1970s were part and parcel of the constructing of the modern Swedish welfare state. To a large extent, even if not exclusively, it reflected the Social democratic ideology of justice and integration. According to this thinking, social differentiation and separation/integration in society, mainly in terms of class, generation and geographical divisions, were seen as more or less synonymous with inequality and domination/subordination. In Hilary Silver´s (1994) terminology, a monopoly paradigm of social exclusion and inclusion was predominant.
In the 1970s, Sweden entered a period of economic and political instability after 25 years of continuous growth and steady Social democratic rule. The public welfare system was challenged, both by the economical and structural change, and by attacks from the political right and left. The responses to those challenges gradually shifted from what has been called a strategy of welfare state employment expansion[2] to a strategy of deregulation and a certain reduction of the public welfare apparatus. In the 1970s and 80s Sweden thus adopted a ‘social investment strategy’ directed towards a more active labour market policy, reforms of education and training, and efforts to equalise men´s and women´s working and life conditions. The strategies of the late 1980s and 1990s however have included bigger proportions of “de-politization”, “marketization” and retrenchments of the public sector than before.
In the 1980s, and even more in the 1990s, older forms of political and education governance were abandoned to a large extent.[3] Far more decisions are now taken at the local level than earlier, and with far more different actors involved. That is: the locus of accomodation[4] of educational policy is partly altered as changes of education to a growing extent is initiated, planned and implemented at the local level. Earlier political agency (the State) was the motor of educational change. Today it is certainly still an important source of action and change, but teachers, parents and students, and external local actors are able to influence what is going on in schools to a much higher extent than earlier.[5] Choice and market mechanisms have been introduced, and the State has parted with practically all its earlier economic steering tools vis-à-vis the municipalities. As e.g. Whitty, Power & Halpin (1998) show, Sweden shares this development with several other countries, facing similar problems and conditions at the same time. What is unique, however, is the specific historic context of Sweden, which the ideologies and strategies of decentralisation, individualisation, pluralism and economism are brought into.
A number of decisions meaning increased local responsibility and freedom to find methods and ways to reach the centrally formulated education goals were taken in the 1980s, when a shift from rule governing to governing by objectives took plac[e: a new national curriculum guide of the comprehensive school in 1980, a new system of State subsidies to local developmental work and in-service training in 1982, the 1989 decision on a more clear-cut division of work between the state and local levels, and the so called ”municipalisation” in 1989, when the Parliament took the decision that teachers and other school staff should be employed by the municipalities instead of the State. ]
In the 1990s a new set of reforms, further shifting the balance between the State and the local level were introduced. The non-socialist government in 1991-94 took more far-reaching steps toward local autonomy than the Social Democrats had previously done, and, with an often used phrase, steps to break the school monopoly, e.g. decisions promoting the establishment of independent schools and the introduction of vouchers, and opening up possibilities of inviting tenders in certain subjects. Also the decision in 1993 to deliver all State subsidies as lump sums to the municipalities, was crucial.
Both socialist and non-socialist governments have contributed to the development described above, but to a higher or lower degree, and with partly different motives[6]. By Social Democrats, decentralisation and deregulation of education have been regarded as a possible way to modernise education and to reach goals of equality and quality when the old ways failed. For the Non-socialist parties, and particularly the Right, such changes have been part of a wider strategy, aiming both at introducing new political goals and means. The liberal ideology behind this strategy tends to treat social and economic life as voluntary and contractual exchange relations between autonomous individuals. Social differences and separation into different spheres are seen as natural and even desirable, as long as individuals are free to choose and move between them. In Silver´s (1994) words this represents a specialisation paradigm of social exclusion and inclusion respectively[7].
Focus and questions
How do leading actors – politicians and officials - at the educational arena, describe and understand the education policy changes that have taken place in the last 10-15 year period? Which forces and motives behind these changes do they identify? How are social exclusion and exclusion described - which foci, concepts, categories and metaphors are chosen? To what extent do the policy actors relate education and governance of education to social change in the last decade? Which similarities and differences, respectively, are visible when we compare such descriptions and analyses of politicians and high officials with those from the people “at the school floor” (teachers, principals, school-nurses and so on)?
Sources and contexts
This article is primarily based on in-depth interviews with twelve Swedish education politicians and administrators (Appendix A), on public statistics and policy documents from the late 1980s and the 1990s. All interviewed have been, and in many cases still are, powerful in shaping and implementing Swedish education politics at national and local level in the 1990s and the first years of the 21st Century:[8]
Six politicians and high officials were interviewed at central level:
§ the Conservative school minister of the Non-socialist government 1991-1994,
§ the Social democratic school minister in the period of 1994-1998,
§ the chairman of the National Union of Teachers in Sweden (Lärarnas Riksförbund, LR)[9]
§ the chairman of the Swedish Teachers´ Union (Lärarförbundet)
§ the managing director of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities (Svenska Kommunförbundet)
§ the Director General of the Swedish Agency of Education (Skolverket).
Six politicians were interviewed at the local level
§ the social democratic chair and the liberal former vice chair of school board in Forest[10]
§ the social democratic chair and the conservative vice chair of the city area authority in Garden, South City
§ the social democratic member and the conservative vice chair of the city area authority in Park, South City
The local contexts - the South (Garden and Park, city areas in South City) and the North (three smaller municipalities: Forest, Lake and Mountain) were chosen to represent widely different socio-economic and demographic conditions. The three inland municipalities in the North suffer from depopulation, loss of jobs and population ageing on the one hand. However the area has got several flourishing high technology industries in e.g. the forestry and mining branches, on the other hand. South, one of the biggest cities in the country, is growing very fast. It has had a drawn-out period of serious economic problems and cuts, and is characterized by a high degree of social segregation today. However, recent developments point in the direction of economic growth and increased prosperity. Among the city areas in South City, those were selected with the largest differences regarding average income, share of social allowance takers and degree of unemployment. In Garden, a majority of the inhabitants has got an immigrant background, the level of unemployment is exceptionally high, and consequently the average income is low. It may be added, that Garden has got a high proportion of young people, and the number of elderly people is low. The Park is a prosperous part of South City, with few unemployed people, relatively few immigrants and few people on social allowance. The age distribution is more even than in the Garden.
Two other Egsie studies have been undertaken in the same local contexts: one school actor study, and a youth survey, respectively[11]. The first study was based on in-depth interviews with forty-two local school actors at lower and upper-secondary level: twenty teachers, eight principals, and fifteen pupil social welfare professionals - special teachers, psychologists, school nurses etc. The school actors were basically given the same questions as the policy actors. In this article, certain comparisons are based on this study. Four hundred and eleven grade 9 students of the 9-year compulsory school participated in the youth survey. The youth questionnaire covered topics such as attitudes towards education, the importance of school success and failure for future life chances, estimated school success of oneself, one´s own future orientation, views on which properties that are important in working-life and which factors that lead to social exclusion. As the analysis of the material from the youth study was still not finished when this article was written, it was too early to draw conclusions or make comparisons to it here. The design of the whole Swedish case study is summarised in table 1 below.
Table 1. The Swedish Egsie study: methods and respondents
Level of analysis / Category / Method / Number of re-spondents
Central political / politicians, high officials / in-depth interviews
policy document
analysis / 6
Local political / politicians / “ / 6
School / teachers, principals,
school-nurses, guidance officers / “ / 42
pupils / questionnaire / 411
The state of Swedish welfare in the late 1990s
In Sweden, the 1990s constituted a period of rapid demographic, economic and political changes, some of which have already been touched upon above. The economic crisis, the reduction of jobs, and the in a modern Swedish perspective exceptionally high levels of unemployment are the most eye-catching ones[12]. In a longer perspective, Swedish economy was further restructured: the service sector and knowledge intensive production expanded, while many jobs disappeared in traditional industry branches.[13] Other changes, such as dramatically increasing numbers of immigrants and refugees seeking asylum, further concentration of the population to a few regions while many municipalities were depopulated, and the entrance into the European union, were probably not less important in producing new social divisions and altering the welfare state.
In Sweden, it has not until recently been customary to discuss social patterns in terms of “social inclusion” and “exclusion”, and, when used, mostly in projects, statistics and research in connection with the European Union. The still most common discourse of social welfare and exclusion is about access to education, labour market and other important arenas, distribution of resources, and about social integration vs. separation. A fourth aspect, participation, is supposed to have become increasingly important today, when ideologies of the marketplace, choice and individual risk-taking have gained ground[14].
As is e.g. illustrated by a recent report on Swedish welfare development in the 1990s, Welfare at the crossroads[15], Sweden is a more divided and polarised country today than 10-15 years before. Resources are more unevenly distributed than at the beginning of the 1990s, as differences in income and wealth have grown, and breaches between rich and poor city areas and municipalities are growing. Also, differences in living conditions between expanding and depopulating areas are increasing. Class and gender divisions tend to remain or have become sharpened in the 1990s. Since long Sweden has got one of the most gender divided labour markets in the Western world, and this pattern does not change. It has become harder to get access to the labour market; larger and larger shares of the population tend to be excluded as being “not good enough” on a number of grounds such as age, lack of education, disability or personal properties. There is a sharp dividing line between regularly employed on the one hand and a growing group of unemployed and part-time or temporarily employed people on the other. Immigrants and young people are among those who are over-represented in the latter category[16], as are disabled people, though public statistics are mostly silent about the latter.[17] Categories traditionally associated with social exclusion in Sweden are “unemployed”, “low educated” and “low-income earner”. In the 1990s “youth” and “immigrant” have gradually gained importance. Yet other possible categories, such as “disability” and “single mother”, are however more seldom visible in statistics.
The picture of exclusion and inclusion within education is more complex. While access to practically all stages of education has increased, and almost all young people get at least 12 year of education today, their transfer from school to work has become much more difficult than before. Many “entrance jobs" have disappeared in the restructuring of economy, and the qualification levels have risen.