As its name suggests, Internationella Engelska Skolan offers bilingual international education (English and Swedish) to primary and secondary school students (6 to 16 years old), in the suburb of Upplands Väsby, north of Stockholm. It occupies the former administrative premises of a neighboring chocolate factory. The four buildings are named after Scandinavian gods: Odin, Freya, Thor and Idunn. A journalist from Mthe magazine of World, visited the minicampus recently and offered a comparison with the houses of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, from the Harry Potter series.
“In a display case at the entrance, among the trophies won by the students, sits Barbara Bergström’s book Tough Love (untranslated, Ekerlids, 2018), describes the report. In this manifesto to the glory of private education, the founder of the school, aged 77, tells how, in thirty years, she managed to build an empire, becoming the owner of forty-six establishments in Sweden. Primary and middle schools which have brought in more than 85 million euros since 1993.”
The previous year, the government of conservative Carl Bildt launched a program of reforms to the national school system which granted each student an “education voucher” allowing them to enroll in the school of their choice (in fact the choice of their parents). The sum distributed annually by the 290 municipalities of the kingdom initially corresponded to 85% of the costs. It quickly swelled to cover them completely.
100% subsidized free choice, according to the logic of the socialization of risks and the privatization of profits, has therefore stimulated the creation of a sprawling parallel network and the constitution of school empires listed on the stock exchange. Only 1% of young Swedes attended private school before the reform. They now total 16% of primary school enrollment and 30% in secondary school.
“It takes a long historical perspective to understand this transformation,” he said. Duty Professor Håkan Forsberg, of Uppsala University. He explains that Sweden has developed an extremely centralized and very inclusive education system by establishing compulsory schooling for everyone from a very young age up to the age of 15, a system which offers technical and general training in the same establishments. The economic problems of the 1970s and 1980s undermined the foundations of the welfare state and forced reconsiderations.
“Tensions and discussions lasted two decades, and it was the social democrats who first put forward the possibility of deregulation and decentralization,” adds the professor. The idea of the voucher was then imagined to allow the private sector to compete and stimulate the public while offering subsidized free choice to parents. »
Stockholm-en-Quebec
Himself a former high school history and Swedish teacher, Mr. Forsberg specializes in the sociology of education. His quantitative research mainly focuses on the school market. They seek to explain how families behave there and the effects of socioeconomic segregation generated or accentuated by great privatization.
“In fact, we can observe a similar movement in several countries around the world,” notes the professor. China has also chosen to deregulate its system to allow competition between different types of service offerings. » He adds that in Sweden, the deregulation and privatization movement also affected the health system and thus allowed the establishment of private clinics and a whole network of hospices for the elderly.
What about in Quebec, where we like to compare ourselves to Scandinavian countries, often to our disadvantage? The Quiet Revolution did not dare attack private schools. There are now around 270, attracting some 125,000 students, 70% of whom are in secondary school, 25% in primary school and 5% in preschool. In total, one in five Quebec high school students (20%) attends a private school, especially in urban areas.
A “three-speed” system, which also includes the “ordinary” public network and public schools with enriched programs which compete with the private sector, has thus developed here. The subsidy granted by Quebec to the privatized network represents 60% of the costs allocated to the public.
Unless I’m mistaken, the reduction or elimination of these subsidies (as required by the system in force in Ontario) is not part of what the Quebec teachers’ unions on strike are negotiating. On the other hand, private schools in Quebec are NPOs which cannot generate profits (like in Sweden), and it is no longer possible to obtain a permit here to open a new one.
Class struggle
The first private initiatives in Sweden sometimes came from non-profit teacher cooperatives. Commercial companies quickly took over. “We find ourselves in a situation of quasi-monopoly on the market,” says Professor Forsberg. Most private schools now belong to a few large groups. There is no limit to their level of profitability. The biggest networks are now billionaires in Swedish crowns. »
The Internationella Engelska Skolan is among them. The heavyweight AcadeMedia is internationalizing, with no less than 100,000 students spread across its schools in Sweden, but also in Norway, Germany and, more recently, the Netherlands. The group has 700 schools, including in the adult education sector. It employs more than 18,500 people. The holding company AcadeMedia AB made a profit of more than 35 million Canadian dollars in the last quarter, including nearly 23 million distributed to its shareholders.
Not all school companies are doing so well. In 2013, the bankruptcy of the JB Education group left 11,000 students and a thousand teachers stranded. The National Inspection Service has closed 25 schools over the past five years for various failings, including the hiring of unqualified teachers.
Free choice?
However, the development of school empires in the famously social-democratic country also stems from the free choice given to Swedish parents. So why do some people favor private schools with their “education voucher”?
Professor Forsberg has studied the situation extensively in Stockholm, where the private network is most extensive, as here in the metropolitan region. He explains that his very egalitarian society negotiates with significant “residential segregation” which stimulates the choice of certain schools to the detriment of certain others. Like in Quebec, where parents prefer to bleed themselves to enroll their offspring in the magnificent private college located a few kilometers from home rather than sending them to the dilapidated multi-purpose bunker in their neighborhood.
The professor sends his own children to the public network, but he specifies that he lives in a privileged area of his university town, where the schools are excellent. Specific programs from the private network, for example offering bilingual education or promising to transform young people into future digital entrepreneurs, also prove attractive for certain clienteles.
“The fact remains that at the secondary level, the best schools are still those in the public network,” concludes Professor Forsberg. A poll released in June 2022 also shows that 60% of the Swedish population is in favor of banning profits in education.
“However, we only have one party on the left which declares itself against this privatized system, while the lobby of large school groups puts a lot of pressure on the other parties. One thing is certain, Sweden finds itself in an extreme deregulated situation, quite unique in the world and unprecedented in Scandinavia. »