Despite being traditionally characterized as social democratic welfare states (Esping-Andersen 1994), or as following a Nordic path to privatization (Verger et al 2017), Sweden and Finland have adopted quite different approaches to private actor involvement in public welfare. In Sweden, the public is increasingly depending on private providers to deliver core welfare services, such as elderly care, social services and health care. Education is no exception. In fact, it is a large and expanding market. In 2017, Swedish municipalities spent about 45 billion SEK (appr. 4.3 billion EUR) on purchases from private actors providing education, and this is more than twice as much that municipalities spent on private providers in 2007 (SKL 2019).
In this paper we pursue a largely under-examined perspective in educational research by ‘following the money’ from the public to the private education industry. We analyse a longitudinal dataset covering the flow of public funding to private actors. This data cover all invoices from purchases made by municipalities from private actors in two segments of the education market: i) Private education delivery at the compulsory level and ii) Professional learning, in-service training, consultancy and support services. This paper thereby aims explore issues of who buys what from whom. ‘Who buys’ refers to municipalities as purchasers of education and related services. The ‘what’ is limited to the two segments and the ‘whom’ refer to the main sellers, including their core missions and ownership. Our analytical approach focuses on actors’ formative roles and the interrelatedness of the public and the private, with a particular focus on commercial and business actors (Ball 2015) and political decisions and policy frameworks that enable or constrain private actor involvement in the growing global education industry (Verger et al 2016; Thompson & Parreira do Amaral 2019; Steiner-Khamsi 2018; Au & Ferrare 2015; Ball 2012).
The two national market segments illustrate how political reforms open up markets and invite private education companies to both deliver and profit from education and public funding in different ways. From a wider international and Nordic perspective, the Swedish case offers perspectives on the implications of the blurring of public–private boundaries and the monetary flows these relationships entail. We also discuss a potential ‘privatization of knowledge’ and argue for the need to further explore the different facets of increasing ‘financialization’ of education (Thompson and Parreira do Amaral 2019:5), nationally as well as globally.