Conference Agenda

Research has highlighted the correlation between participation in extracurricular activities (EA) and school performance (Eccles, 2003; Linver, 2009; Meier, 2018), its contribution to the development of transversal skills improving academic paths and students’ social mobility (Covay & Carbonaro, 2010; Lowe & al, 2020) in the capacity to generate social capital and reduce segregation (Schaefer, D. Simpkins, S. & Ettekal, A, 2015).

Alongside impact, previous research have sought to understand whether participation in EA has a social structure related to child’s intersectional positions of gender, class, origin,... There is a consensus in considering family socioeconomic situation as the main driver of participation in EA, also related to a certain class culture of the concerned cultivation pattern (Lareau, 2011). Although variability has been identified in low-income neighborhoods where participation in religious instruction is higher (Palou, 2021), as well as racial stratification, in the development of transnational educational practices, such as the herigatge culture and Language learning.

In recent years, EA and extended school policies have become increasingly relevant to local political agendas. Certain municipalities seek to develop universal access to afternoon educational activities using different instruments (grands, public offer, social prescription,…). International experiences (coming form Boston, Pittsburg, Chicago) have become benchmarks in this field, inspiring local governements in adopting innovating practices. In Catalonia, the 360ª Education movement promotes the design of "the city curricula", generating and connecting a particular extracurricular offer open to all students.

Taking the case of two Barcelona neighbourhoods, this study aims to understand the adjustment between the new afternoon-time educational policies, and the multicultural and low-income context where they are set up. We are interested in understanding the concept of inequality and inclusion that lays below the normative model, and its potential in the governance of migrant children, that may foster the acculturation pressure towards particular parental models.

One of the features of the Nordic welfare model has been the prioritization of a comprehensive public school model (Blossing, Imsen et al. 2014, Imsen and Volckmar 2014). However, for the last thirty years there has been increased support for private alternatives in several of the Nordic countries. This is also the case in Norway where the number of private schools and pupils attending them has more than doubled the last ten years (SSB, 2020). While private schools constituted 3,5 % of the comprehensive schools in 2003, it had increased to over 9 % in 2019 and from 2010 – 2020 the percentage of private schools had increased by 63%. In the same periode the percentage of pupils attending private schools have increased from 2,3% to 4,3% (SSB, 2020).

Within a nordic context Norway has been one of the countries that have been restrictive when it comes to privatsation and market-led policies (Wiborg 2013, Dovemark, Kosunen et al. 2018). Compared to Sweden and Denmark, Norway have had a restrictive legislation clearifying that private schools can only be established on the terms that it offer an alternative to and does not come in competition with the public school. In order to avoid segregation and commersialisation, school fees are kept low by public funding and it is prohibited to make profit on education (Sivesind 2016). However, even though Norway traditionally have stood out as restrictive when it comes to privatisation policies, the status and the balance between private and public schools are changing. Whereas this is related to how conservative governments over the last twenty years have fought to liberalise the private school legislation (and renamed it to ”the free school act”), it is also linked to other policies not directly regulating private education. In this context descentralisation policies, devolving economic responsibility from state to municipality level, have been central when private schools have replaced public schools in financially poor municipalities. While decentralisation and market-led reforms have been introduced simoultanously as privatisation policies (Bjordal & Haugen, 2021), we know little about how they interact and if and how the increased support for private alternatives are related to the development of the public school.

Inspired by a critical approach emphasising the need to investigate privatisation policies in a broader perspective and in relation to other policies, this paper examines how parents support for private schools are related to the development of the public school. Informed by research illuminating how neoliberal reforms in education can stimulate support for private alternatives (Ball & Youdell, 2008), our aim has been to study the ”process of privatisation” as related to a broader restructuring of the educational landcsape The aim is to illuminate processes and mechanisms that stimulate privatisation within education.

Who decides where a child should go to school? The answer to this question has changed over the past 30 years in Sweden, a country who has faced extensive neoliberal educational reforms during the past decades (Arreman och Holm 2011; Lundahl m.fl. 2013). Based on arguments about increasing individual freedom, free school choice was introduced in Sweden in the 1990s. Ever since, local authorities in Sweden have been commissioned to organize local school choice markets (Dahlstedt m.fl. 2019).

Education in democratic societies has always had to deal with the tension between individual freedom and a need for public good (Labaree 1997; Börjesson 2016; Levin 1987). The organization of school choice systems varies around Sweden, and there is not yet a single model in place for how to design school choice systems. This paper contributes with knowledge about how civil servants work to organize school choice in dialogue with local politicians, as well as how they balance between different goals in practice (e.g. goal conflicts can arise between freedom of choice and integration, since a high degree of freedom in relation to school choice generally leads to increased segregation (Trumberg och Urban 2020)).

Knowledge about what happens in the organization and design of local school choice systems is necessary to understand which values that ​​are prioritized in practice. This paper focuses on what municipalities' organization of school choice means for the Swedish school and the students within these schools.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and problematize the dilemmas and goal conflicts that emerge as civil servants work with the organization on school choice in Swedish municipalities.

The paper suggests that the tension between individual freedom and the school as a collective good tends to end up with the officials. This means that questions about conflicting goals concerning school's role in relation to freedom, justice, and equality – questions, that may be considered political by nature – often are handed over to civil servants within the municipal bureaucracy. How civil servants interpret their role and function within municipal democracy, as well as the values ​​they express, is important for the link between education and the public's trust in representative democracy.

I use the theoretical notion of ‘discretion’ (Brodkin 2020), which pinpoints the extent to which micro-practices of street-level organizations take part in shaping meta-politics. The interest in discretion highlights the importance of zooming in on the practices of civil servants and their level of discretion in enabling educational policies.