Problematiken med avhopp och hög andel elever med ofullständig gymnasieutbildning står högt på den svenska politiska dagordningen. Reformarbetet på området bedrivs av flera aktörer på olika nivåer, där myndigheter, kommuner, fristående skolhuvudmän och givetvis rektorer och lärare i gymnasieskolor är några av de mest centrala. Här studeras en av dessa policyaktörer, nämligen den statliga myndigheten Skolinspektionen (SI), med syftet att beskriva och analysera SI:s aktiviteter som kan kopplas till att förhindra avhopp och öka genomströmningen från gymnasieskolan. Empiriskt bygger studien på myndighetstexter och på intervjuer med myndighetsledning och skolinspektörer. Teoretiskt utgår studien från ett perspektiv där styrning ses som ett verb (Clarke 2015; Ozga 2016) och analyserar aktiviteter, processer och det arbete som utgör själva görandet av styrning och som sker både inom och mellan olika institutioner och organisatoriska nivåer. Studien visar att SI:s aktiviteter, som de har stor handlingsfrihet att utforma, och inte minst SI:s så kallade kvalitetsgranskningar, kan förstås ur detta perspektiv. SI lägger problemlösningsansvaret för att minska gymnasieavhopp hos rektorer, lärare och skolpersonal. I arbetet rekommenderas och premieras vissa arbetsmetoder, ansatser och kunskapsbaser. Dessa styrningsaktiviteter bygger på vissa föreställningar och kunskaper som görs manifesta och genom inspektörernas arbete i form av ett slags »skuldbeläggandets politik«.

Low completion rate in upper secondary education is seen as a bigproblem in the Nordic countries. School failure has shown todramatically increase the risks for unemployment and  labourmarket exclusion with severe consequences for both society andthe young person. This paper analyses national policy measures tocombat low upper secondary education completion rates inNorway and Sweden, often regarded as representing a socialdemocratic welfare model and a universalistic transition regime.The analysis demonstrates that although this issue has receivedextensive political attention, the two countries display somewhatdifferent policy designs. The Norwegian approach is proactive andtargeted while the Swedish policy is more general and directedtowards reforming organisational structures in upper-secondary education. In sum, our analysis demonstrates that nationalgovernance structures shape and influence policy design in thecontext of an increasingly diversified Nordic social democraticwelfare state regime.

In this chapter, we focus on how education governance can be conceptualized and understood in a context of far-reaching marketization and privatization. We address the challenges and limitations of (political) education governance in times of educational marketization. We argue that the Swedish case is a good starting point for such analytical exploration, since Sweden has experienced quite a far-reaching transformation in this regard, from a strongly centralist and state-led education system to a dispersed, multi-actor and marketized education system, which may be of relevance and importance for additional theorizing in this area. We show that few current political and societal challenges to the dominant policy trajectory exist and that both social democratic and non-socialist governments follow an entrenched policy path, governing largely by preservation and restoration. We argue for the need to critically discuss and unpack the complexities of governing education in a policy context in which market forces have entered, and fundamentally are affecting, education in all policy stages.

During the last 40 years, many countries have launched radical reforms of their public education systems in a neoliberal direction that emphasises a mixed economy of schooling. The reforms have been accompanied by discourses of ‘a crisis’ of the public sector, and shared broadly similar elements of varying degrees of decentralisation and new public management (NPM), choice, competition and the introduction of private actors and interests in public education. Much social policy and education research on marketisation reforms has focused on Anglo-Saxon countries, where institutional changes towards more choice and competition have led to a similar dismantling of the welfare state. This has included turning citizens (students, parents) into customers, with all the resulting implications for ethnically and socio-economically based differentiation (Cahill & Hall, 2014; Campbell et al., 2009; Clarke et al., 2007; Roda & Stuart Wells, 2013). However, despite the numerous similarities in the direction of education reforms, the existing literature on marketisation does not capture the peculiarities of the Nordic education policy settings, where choice and competition coexist with a strong sense of education as a public good.

In the Nordic countries and beyond, evaluation and quality assurance are becoming increasingly insitutionalised as means to govern the welfare state (Dahler-Larsen, 2011). Higher education is no exception (Leiber, Stensaker & Harvey, 2015; Jarvis, 2014). Since the 1990s, different national evaluation systems have been developed and implemented in Swedish Higher Education (HE) (Segerholm, 2016). Over time, these systems have displayed different political purposes and designs. One major component in the most recent system in operation from 2017 and onwards is national evaluation of the higher education institutions’ (HEIs) own internal quality assurance systems, carried out by the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (SHEA) (Lindgren & Rönnberg, 2017).This paper aims to analyse a SHEA try-out evaluation in which HEIs internal quality assurance were evaluated. The following questions guide our study: What enactments do these try-out exercises entail and what actors are involved? What kind of knowledge is mobilized and used in these enactments? We focus on two cases where the work with and experiences from a) HEI actors, b) officials at the SHEA, and c) external review panels are analysed. We collected data as the national try-out evaluation was implemented. This include near 30 interviews with SHEA staff, HEI actors, and members in external review panels. Extensive documentary materials, such as self-evaluations from the HEIs, schedules, plans and SHEA decisions, were also analysed.This paper is part of a larger research project, “Governing by evaluation in higher education in Sweden”, analyzing how evaluative activities govern Swedish Higher Education policy and practice. We conceptualise governing as activities composed of assemblages of places, people, policies, practices and power (Clarke, 2015). Following this, we analyse the activities and the actual work connected to quality assurance and its policy-making, and how it is enacted and learned (Ball et. al, 2012). Drawing on Freeman and Sturdy (2014), we see knowledge in policy as taking different forms, i.e. as embodied, inscribed and enacted.

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse two recent quality assurance (QA) reforms in Swedish higher education (HE) and to discuss how shifts and continuities can be understood with a particular focus on the role of affects and emotions. Using conceptual devices from the literature on affects and emotions in the context of policy, official documents, media materials and interviews with stakeholders were analysed. In conclusion, the reforms were surrounded by distinctive affective atmospheres in which different emotional registers were circulated and articulated. The 2010 reform was criticised due to a lack of deliberation and produced a QA system described by HE actors in negative terms prior to its implementation. The second policy process after 2014 was emotionally reframed as being open for dialogue and collaboration in the creation of the reformed QA system. These affective atmospheres were framed by their particular policy histories and memories, but they also involved strategic attempts to create certain feelings, responses and actions.

This study explores the movements of some Swedish former education policy-makers that are currently active as commercial edu-business actors with the ambition to expand in the Global Education Industry (GEI). The aim is to map and analyze how a selection of Swedish edu-preneurs affiliated with a particular Swedish school chain enter the GEI and thereby market both their commercialized services and the policy ideas about so-called free schools, in its Swedish version. The study shows how these edu-preneurs move from the domestic to global arenas and how their business and policy advocacy activities are framed and represented. Mobilization and public exposure of previous and present policy advocacy networks are important assets for these edu-preneurs as they navigate the GEI. The study illustrates how these actors make use of particular forms of knowledge, from department ministerial work and party politics, which blends with work in public relations and various edu-businesses, pointing to the interrelatedness of politics, policy, business, power, and ideology. The paper concludes by raising issues in need of further exploration and debate, pertaining to our understanding of education policy-making and, ultimately, democracy.

This chapter focuses on the governing work of Swedish school inspectors with regards to the role and function of knowledge. As professionals, inspectors are situated as relays and brokers of policy standing in contact with both the political arena and practice arenas. School inspectors use and produce knowledge and they rely on, search for, accumulate and communicate different forms of knowledge. In this chapter, we seek to understand knowledge in the inspection context as existing in three phases, namely as embodied, inscribed and enacted (Freeman and Sturdy, 2014). The aim is to identify and discuss different phases of knowledge in inspectors' work by asking how the different forms of embodied, inscribed and enacted knowledge are manifested, incorporated and transformed in the course of inspection. The chapter illustrates how different forms of knowledge are intertwined with issues of legitimacy, accountability and control, which is argued to be importat for how inspection and the work of inspectors' are perceived and judged in different contexts and settings.