Swedish education reform: High ambitions and troubling results

Sweden’s radical shift in the early 1990s to a highly decentralized and market-oriented education system aimed at raising the quality and efficiency of education in terms of outcomes and costs. The present situation is far from the aims of the reform-makers: on average, it shows decreasing academic results over time and in international comparison, and increasing school segregation. Knowledge on the economic aspects is lacking to a high extent. There have been efforts to mitigate this negative development by increased state control and evaluation, but the major features of the education system introduced in the 1990s are largely intact.