How far-reaching are the government's proposals to reform free schools?
Sweden's education minister Johan Pehrson has promised that the reforms to the free school system announced this week will see "stock market wheeler-dealers" being "thrown head first" out of the education sector. How far-reaching are the reforms really?
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What's the background to the free school inquiry?
The inquiry was initially launched in June 2022 by the former Social Democrat government, which appointed Johan Ernestam, a former research officer for the Swedish Teacher's union, as chair.
The initial remit was to "ensure that tax money that is apportioned to schools is used for what the funds are intended for, for example financing the operations of the school".
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But the current Moderate-led government in July 2023 changed the inquiry's remit from investigating a ban on extracting profits (vinstförbud) to investigating ways to limit the extraction of profits (vinstbegränsning).
To do this, it recommended that the inquiry investigate "increased checks on owners and leaderships", "certain bans on withdrawing profits", and "stricter sanctions".
In February this year the government replaced Ernestam with Joakim Stymne, a veteran Moderate party official and civil servant.
What did Stymne recommend?
The report of the inquiry into stricter requirements for the school sector is extremely detailed, containing more than 30 proposals and weighing 1.2 kilograms.
It recommended, among other measures:
requiring companies running schools to maintain separate accounts, särredovisning, for each individual school or preschool, to make it easier for regulators and the public to track how the municipal money provided per pupil (skolpeng) is used
for each individual school or preschool, to make it easier for regulators and the public to track how the municipal money provided per pupil (skolpeng) is used banning companies who launch a new school or buy an existing one from withdrawing profits for the first five years
empowering the state to require, if it chooses, schools to prove they have not distributed profits to their owners in the previous year if they want to be eligible for a targeted government grant to increase quality, and also to require that schools account for how such grant money is used
empowering the Swedish Schools Inspectorate to impose a ban on those operating a free school from withdrawing profits from a school (värdeöverföringsförbud) if it identifies "one or more deficiencies that seriously hinder the students' ability to achieve educational goals".
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What did the inquiry chief and Sweden's education minister say at the launch?
In a debate article in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, Stymne said that he believed the proposals, if enacted, would increase the quality of the free school sector, driving out the more unscrupulous profit-seekers.
"I believe that there will continue to be a variety of operators who want to run schools. Making a profit will not be prohibited," he said. "However, running school operations will not be attractive to those who primarily want to pocket the school fees."
Education minister Johan Pehrson decried the "the widespread naivety around free schools", which he said had even come from within his own party, and declared that "stock market wheeler-dealers" would be "thrown head first" out of the education sector.
What did the free schools say?
The companies running free schools have expressed outrage, with Andreas Mörck, director of the trade group Almega Utbildning, saying the proposals were a "witch-hunt" which he said threatened the continued existence of free schools.
He said the bans on extracting profits in the three listed situations would "hit small schools which already have thin margins particularly hard", and argued the proposal that schools receiving state grants should not be able to extract profits "in practice meant the forced shutdown" of some small schools, which depended on such grants for 10 percent of their income.
The Internationella Engelska Skolan chain's head of public affairs, Linda Öholm, complained that the accounting requirements would make it hard to cross-subsidise schools in less wealthy municipalities, meaning well-functioning schools would be "cut off at the knees'.
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What did critics of free schools say?
Opposition parties and campaigners against the free school system were also critical.
The Centre Party's Niels Paarup-Petersen said he believed the free school companies' criticisms were part play-acting.
"I don't think it's very real," he told The Local. "The part about them getting less government funding is real because that will be detrimental to their overall budget. But the rest of it shouldn't be a big problem for the big companies. Most of it will hardly have any effect at all."
The Social Democrats' education spokesperson, Åsa Westlund, also said she didn't expect it to transform the sector.
"Even with these proposals, it will still be possible to use school money for waffle stalls instead of for students' education. So it is far from enough to address the profiteering in Swedish schools," she told the Altinget news site. "The school companies are benefiting both because they are not proposing a total ban on extracting profits, but also because it will be harder to start schools, which will mean fewer new competitors."
Marcus Larsson, a campaigner against free schools with the think-tank Balans, said that while many of the proposals were positive, they did not go far enough.
"This is like filling in some of the cracks with plaster rather than renovating the whole system," he said.
"It's still going to be a market and there are still going to be participants in this market who are there to take advantage of the potential for over-compensation which the state allows in Sweden. So this doesn't change anything actually when it comes to incentives for companies."
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