Justifying the Need for Control. Motives for Swedish National School Inspection during Two Governments

Abstract

This paper analyses the political motives that underlie the increased educational control exercised by reinstalling and reinforcing school inspection during the periods of 2001–2003 and 2006–2008. These periods cover both social democratic and non-socialist governments, with different parties in office. The paper draws on an approach to scrutinize the process of problematization in public policy making applied on political policy documents. Overall, school inspection has been politically and ideologically unchallenged and justified on similar grounds by the two governments. By focusing on quality, equivalence and, in the latter period, educational and pupils' academic results, school inspection was legitimized and framed in a way that leaves no room for party political opposition.

Keywords:

• school inspection
• Sweden
• education policy
• political party

The author acknowledges support from The Swedish Research Council for financing the two projects Swedish national school inspections: Introducing centralised instruments for governing in a decentralised context (no. 2007-3579) and Governing by Inspection (no. 2009-5770). The author further acknowledges Umeå Universtity for financing the project Inspecting the ‘Market’: Education at the Intersection of Marketisation and Central State Control (no. 223-514-09).

Notes

¹ In the 2010 national elections, the non-socialist Alliance (the Moderates, the Liberals, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats) remained in office and a new nativist party, the Swedish Democrats, entered the Riksdag. The Social Democratic party had formed a socialist alliance with the Left party and the Green party prior to the 2010 elections. This alliance was rapidly dissolved after the elections, but the core dilemma continues, and “Leftist parties have to look for new ways of solving the electoral dilemma of catering to their former core constituencies and appealing to new voter groups in the middle class”. (Busemeyer, 2009, p. 122)

² There may be good reasons to translate the concept to “equity” rather than “equivalence” in some instances (Englund & Francia, 2008, c.f. Francia, 2011b). However, the official Swedish translation is “equivalence” and, since this paper discusses and analyzes the official rhetoric of the state, that concept is used.

³ The written considerations (remissvar) from agencies, municipalities and organizations on suggestions brought forward in commission reports are not included in the systematic analysis due to the paper's focus on the stances of the political parties. However, looking briefly at these considerations as compiled in Government bill 2007/08: 50, while the overall attitudes are mainly positive, there are also several actors who express their doubts when it comes to reorganizing the educational agencies—for instance, the National Agency for Education (NAE), The Swedish Teachers' Union (LF) and the Swedish Agency for Public Management (Statskontoret). Turning to a few of the considerations based on the suggestions in SOU 2007: 101, they are also mainly positive, but the Swedish Teachers' Union (2008) and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (2008), for instance, emphasize the need for local evaluations and the inspections being sensitive and receptive to specific local conditions and circumstances. In sum, even if there is mainly consensus at the national political level regarding the need of extensive national school inspection, when looking at the written considerations, this unity is somewhat challenged and the agreement is not that manifest.

⁴ In preparing for the state budget in 2007 and 2008, the Left party did not recognize that additional financial resources would be necessary for more intensified inspection. The inspections had already shown positive effects, it was argued, on developmental efforts in schools and municipalities. Since inspection was already working properly and in the way it was intended, the argument went, it should not be necessary to increase inspection efforts (Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education 2006/07: UbU1; Parliamentary Motion 2006/07: Ub334). Thus, the party was not questioning the inspections per se, but opposing devoting additional financial resources to activities that had been judged by external evaluation to be already working well.