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Private international education is on the rise, but we still have limited knowledge on how different commercial actors operate in this field and how it affects local teachers and their work in the schools abroad. Swedish school companies have been active in exporting schooling in the international arena, including “Swedish” education models. In this article, we examine one company and their operations in India. We explore the interpretations of the company education model by teachers in the Indian schools, and how this affects their professional capacity. Mixed qualitative methods of interviews, on-site school visits and documentary reviews, were used to examine the possibilities for teachers to exercise professional agency within their working environment. Our findings show that teachers operate within a highly structured pedagogical environment characterised by a given curriculum, a centralised learning platform and training programme, and a set of dominant discourses around values and teaching practices. Teachers are expected to embrace a new professional identity in a process of discarding past experiences and adopting the new professional language given by the company's particular education model. In willingly embracing the company discourses and expectations, teachers’ agency tends to be constrained.

The education sector has been increasingly affected by legal discourse, new managerialism, litigation, burgeoning regulation and accountability involving inspections and audits, and rises in lawsuits. These processes have been described as juridification and have complex effects. In this paper we focus on juridification’s impact on preschool governance during times of increased privatisation in Sweden. We aim to unpack links between juridification and privatisation by analysing the multifaceted issues of how law, litigation and legal discourse become manifested and are navigated by various actors in local preschool quasi-market governance. The results show how intricate connections between juridification and privatisation tend to make public and private relations more legalistic, contract-based and competitive. Juridification and privatisation also increase conformity in terms of, for instance, pedagogical profiles, practices and organisational structures. In addition, these inter-related processes promote and largely benefit corporate group formation and expansion as legal knowledge and economic resources to navigate local preschool quasi-market governance become increasingly essential. This starkly contrasts with the core ostensible objectives of privatisation and marketisation reforms – to promote diversity, pluralism, and a wide range of preschool options for parents.

This study explores the quest for preschool quality and the ideational foundation it builds on through the work of a Swedish edu-business operating preschools internationally. We analyse associated flows and uses of (global) ideas on preschool quality to understand how such businesses draw on, remould and ‘move’ certain ideas on quality and quality assurance. For this we use data obtained from visits to, interviews with representatives of, and various documents produced by the business and two of its subsidiaries, one Swedish and one Norwegian. The analysis highlights important aspects of three dimensions of ideational power: the power through, over and in ideas. The results show how the business acts, particularly through the Norwegian subsidiary, as a pioneering ideational leader of preschool improvement. In this position it conveys an acclaimed state-of-the-art quality system to the policy domain, thereby legitimising large-scale private preschool provision in policy contexts where it is increasingly questioned.

Under de senaste decennierna har frågor om marknadisering alltmer kommit i blickfånget i den offentliga debatten om skola och utbildning. Ofta har diskussionen rört grund- och gymnasieskolan, men denna utveckling rör också i allra högsta grad förskolan. Detta kapitel behandlar hur förskolan som marknad styrs och hur detta tar sig uttryck med ett fokus på kommunens centrala roll som marknadsorganisatör. Därigenom vill vi ge läsaren en referensram och en begreppsapparat för att beskriva och förstå förskolans marknadsutsättning samt att stimulera till vidare reflektion och diskussion om hur denna situation i förlängningen kan påverka förskoleverksamheten och de yrkesverksammas arbete.

This article focuses on a Swedish school company and its operations in India, examining how setting up and operating schools in another national place forge particular spatial imaginaries. It contributes to literature on the Global Education Industry by focusing on international moves of commercial non-Anglo-Saxon actors. Drawing on interviews and extensive fieldwork in India, we show how the ‘marriage’ between the global (represented by the Swedish company) and local (the ‘Indian’) are manifested in the spatial imaginary of the ‘glocal school’, encompassing hierarchical otherings rooted in discourses of both globalisation and colonialism.

Tax-funded private provision of welfare services in Sweden is among the most extensive in Europe. This paper focuses on a contradictory example of how discrepancies between neoliberal ideals and practice are embedded in the governance of Swedish preschool. Over time, national and local regulations in Sweden have become increasingly comprehensive and moved toward managerial systems. Using Alain Enthoven’s model of managed competition, and drawing on documents and interviews, this paper focuses on two right-wing, urban municipalities with a very high share of preschools operated by private actors, and their organization of local preschool quasi-markets in terms of so-called sponsors concerning five functions: establishing rules of equity, approving all participating private pre-schools, managing the enrollment process, creating price-elastic demand, and managing risk-selection. The findings show how instead of limiting bureaucratic power, municipal managers have been empowered to plan and optimize the organization of the preschool sector in ways discordant with neoliberal ideas.