A School for all or a School for the Labour Market? Analyzing the Goal Formulation of the 1991 Swedish Upper Secondary Education reform

ABSTRACT

The 1991, Swedish upper secondary school reform presents internationally an unusual case of the far-reaching integration of academic and vocational programmes. It has often been claimed that late tracking, such as characterizes this reform, helps to reduce inequalities between different social classes. This article addresses the question of how the government motivated and argued for a unified upper secondary school. The article finds that, contrary to expectations, an economic goal was prominent in the policy documents, and that the reform in question (postponed tracking) was not motivated primarily from an equality perspective. The article also indicates that there is a potential conflict between these two goals that has not been dealt with politically.

KEYWORDS:

• Upper-secondary school
• Sweden
• educational goals
• tracking
• conflicts
• problem framing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Josefina Erikson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6050-1574

Notes

¹I have modified Lundahl et al.'s (2010) original model in the sense that I refer on the individual level only to single individuals, not companies.

²All English translations of excerpts taken from the original Swedish text of the bill are by the author.

³jämlikhet.

⁴likvärdighet.