Reshaping the Nordic education model in an era of efficiency. Changes in the comprehensive school project in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden since the millennium

ABSTRACT

The Nordic Education Model was an important part of the social democratic welfare state for many years in the second half of the 20th century. Since the millennium, transnational agencies have drawn education from the realm of politics into a global market place by advocating strategies such as efficiency, competition, decentralisation, governing by detailed objectives, control, privatisation, and profile schools. This article gives brief accounts of major trends in current school development policies, discourses, and practices in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden since the millennium, and explores how the values of the Nordic model are affected by the new policies. It is argued that the Nordic model still exists as the predominant system for the large majority of Scandinavian children at a national level, but that a number of new technologies aiming to increase the efficiency of teaching and learning are gradually undermining the main values of the Nordic model.

KEYWORDS:

• The Nordic education model
• educational equality
• neo-liberal education policy
• educational efficiency

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Reshaping the Nordic education model in an era of efficiency. Changes in the comprehensive school project in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden since the millennium