To Örebro University

This chapter explores the Swedish case as an example of how privatisation and commercialisation intertwine by following the flow of public funding to private actors. We do this by studying two segments of the Swedish education market: i) education delivery and ii) training, consultancy and support services sold to municipalities and schools. Analysis of a longitudinal dataset based on municipal invoice data enabled us to identify the main actors and to shed light on issues of 'who buys what from whom'. The main private actors are analysed to identify who they are, their core missions, rationales and ownership. The analysis of market segments and the private actors illustrates 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 perspective, the Swedish case offers some cautionary tales about the blurring of public–private boundaries in education, primarily in education delivery and the expansion of for-profit free schools, the 'privatisation of knowledge' when private consultancy actors become knowledge providers and the increasing financialisation of education.

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.

The reception and integration of immigrants has become a prioritized issue in Sweden, being one of the European countries receiving most asylum applications since 2014. For rural communities immigration can be a possible solution in reversing problems of population decline. At the same time the urbanisation rate of international migrants is very high while their employment rate in rural areas remains comparatively low (Hedlund et al, 2017). Increasing international immigration creates challenges for rural communities in organizing reception and activities to match immigrants to education and the local labour market. These challenges are not unique to rural areas, but the specificity of the rural have often been overseen in immigration establishment studies. Thus, this paper focuses not on the migrants and what they 'bring', but on the receiving municipalities and the local labour market which they are to settle in to. The aim of the paper is to explore a) how the rural municipalities are organizing and working in promoting immigrants establishment, through for example workplace learning and education, and b) actors on the local labour markets perceptions regarding possibilities and obstacles for immigrants establishment. 

The paper focuses on the understandings and practices in the municipalities work regarding immigrants and the labour markets in line with theories of policy work. Masseys (1994) theories of space, place and gender is also used since what is seen as possibilities and obstacles for immigrants' establishment and the activities created has to be seen in a cultural, material and historical context. 

The study is part of a larger project on integration and education of adult migrants in rural areas in three municipalities in the rural north of Sweden. Municipal policy documents are analyzed and interviews conducted with municipal actors organizing activities such as education and workplace learning. Possible and actual employers such as CEOs and company owners in the private sector and head teachers and unit managers in the public sector are also interviewed. 

Preliminary results indicate that all three municipalities are keen on keeping the immigrants and highlights possibilities of a 'demographic refill' for their communities. Through a regional actor different projects were launched targeting both immigrants and plausible employers.   Interviews with actors on the local labour market indicates different attitudes towards employing immigrant personnel. Differences in perception also seems to reflect classical differences in the gendered labour market. 

The work of municipalities and perceptions and strategies on local labour market regarding immigrants establishments touches upon several issues of relevance for Nordic educational research such as formation of educational activities, workplace learning, education in rural areas as well as aspects of inclusion, power relationships, and formal and informal qualification demands affecting immigrants’ possibilities for learning and space of agency in the process of establishment. 

Evaluation has grown in both volume and scope across levels and sectors in recent decades, particularly in the school sector. Despite this growth, there is insufficient knowledge about how and in what ways evaluations are formed, institutionalized and used in education governance and education reforms. This thesis addresses some of these issues by studying evaluation policy. The aim of the thesis is to explore and analyse the design and possible changes in national evaluation policy in compulsory education during two periods of extensive education reforms (1988-1994 and 2008-2014).

The theoretical framework builds on evaluation research and policy studies, particularly the literature on policy design. These two strands of literature are supplemented with additional analytical tools from historical institutionalism regarding policy change. Drawing on previous research, a definition of evaluation policy that incorporates the policy context and also enables studying an implicit policy is proposed. On the empirical level, the findings are based on official policy documents, material produced by national government agencies as well as evaluations and evaluation systems.

The thesis shows that during the first period (1988-1994), the evaluation policy was characterized as a means of helping to implement the extensive reforms. Evaluations were to be conducted on all levels of the school system to promote development on each executive level. The policy design reflected evaluation as a learning and capacity-building tool. Schools and municipalities were positioned as owners and co-creators of evaluation knowledge. During the second period (2008-2014), the evaluation policy was partially revised in order to come to terms with inadequate evaluations and declining school results. The policy included more sanctions and hortatory tools, and more emphasis was placed on comparisons and rankings. The evaluation policy was based on the assumption that local actors should and will act on evaluative knowledge created by the agencies and international actors, and that they could be motivated to do so by the threat of, for example sanctions or issues of ranking and comparisons.

The evaluation policy design was largely stable over time. However, three more incremental but significant changes were identified: i) the policy design element “agents and implementation structures” was altered, ii) the evaluation policy expanded and iii) became more directed towards national and external control. These changes also indicated more negative implications for democracy during the second period. In relation to evaluations’ democratic function the analysis showed that the evaluation policy mainly strengthened the legitimizing and controlling function, whereas the enlightenment function was not prominent.

This implies a risk that issues that may be relevant from a broader democratic and societal perspective may be overlooked and not subjected to evaluation. The thesis also acknowledges and illustrates the importance of uncovering and reconstructing evaluation policies, policies that are partly veiled, since also implicit policies will have democratic implications.

The demand for evaluation and monitoring in governance is well known. A development that has taken different forms in different countries, this paper focusing on Sweden and the educational sector. Even though evaluation is an old practice within the government of Sweden, different times have called for different kinds of evaluation (see e.g. Vedung 2010). In the late 1980s the governing of the education system was reformed to a system of management by objectives and results, hence demanding new functions for evaluation in the governing of education. This could be seen as a shift into governing by evaluation (see Foss Hansen 2013). But how this takes shape can be expected to be a constant struggle since the question of what evaluation is, and should be, in a specific governing setting is a political question in a world of symbols, ideologies and power relations (Hanberger 2012). Therefore, how evaluation is perceived, what is being evaluated and how and whom having a voice are matters concerning governing of evaluation. The argument here being that by focusing on, and scrutinizing, evaluation policy these kinds of questions can be explored, questioned and possibly criticized. With evaluation policy being defined as the formal and informal rules, routines and norms that is used to shape, conduct or change decisions and actions regarding evaluation. This means that both explicit and implicit evaluation policy can be studied.

The aim of the paper is to explore and describe how evaluation policy is formed and steered within the educational sector in Sweden during two periods of intense educational reforms (1988-1994 and 2008-2014). Drawing on a policy design framework different design elements is identified from empirical material such as governmental and educational agencies documents, and by mapping of evaluation systems and evaluations conducted by responsible agencies. The analysis show that the amount of evaluations and evaluation systems has increased over the years. Today, the Swedish education system rely extensively on evaluations of different kinds as a way to control and enhance quality and performance in education and schooling but also to enable competition and support school choice on the Swedish education market. But while more measuring and evaluation could possibly widen the debate the preliminary results indicate that ‘complexity reductionism’ rather being the case. More performance measurements and use of indicators and to a larger extent relying on international student assessments to value the national educational system while stand-alone evaluations adhering to the complex nature of education taking the backseat. The preliminary findings thus indicate that evaluation policy could be one possible way to enhance our understanding of the relationship between evaluation and governance. Making it possible to question the role and function of evaluation in governance. And thus, to explore governance of and by evaluation.

Evaluation is assumed to support democratic governance and promote accountability and policy and program improvement (Boswell 2009; Chelimsky 1995; Hanberger 2006; 2012; Pollitt 2006; Weiss et al. 2005). Thus, from this perspective evaluation is conceived as a governing tool or a governing technique. It could be assumed that different modes of governing require different roles concerning types of evaluations and evaluative knowledge, however empirical investigations is by no means plentiful on this respect and thus needs further studying. Also, evaluation has mostly been regarded as one of many different governing techniques. Lately, however, scholars are raising the issue of systemic evaluation governance (Hansen 2013) which also brings an additional element to it.

This paper discusses the role of evaluation in a specific policy area; Swedish education policy. Sweden has been criticized by OECD in lacking coherence among the different evaluation parts which also calls for an investigation of why and how the different parts of the evaluative functions have emerged and what demands they responded to, and how evaluation has been designed and governed. The paper will examine the purposes of evaluation in education governance by analyzing public policy documents, governmental investigations and previous research, focusing on the time after the Second World War and the building of a comprehensive school system. Different periods are identified on the basis of different modes of education governance. The paper will discuss the implications of the study results for the literature on evaluation governance.

The concept of evaluation policy usually refers to "the way to do evaluations" in line with SIDA's (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) strategy for conducting evaluations (SIDA 1999; 2012). This way of framing evaluation policy is in my experience, the most common way to think of the concept. A strategic and written plan for how evaluations should be conducted. That is, policy is the product of authoritative decision making and the policy work contains the implementation of this decision. However, this is not the only way to view evaluation policy, and a few years back New Directions for Evaluation devoted a special issue to highlight evaluation policy. With scholars such as Mark, Cooksy, Trochim and Chelimsky (2009) arguing for the need of a "fresh look on evaluation policy" and especially the intimate relation with the evaluation practice (Trochim 2009). Although this sounds like an attempting and promising opening for a debate, these scholars have not adequately addressed the issue of evaluation policy by focusing solely on the hierarchy of policy-making, thus ignoring the vertical dimension of evaluation policy, which is highly relevant to develop a deeper understanding of the making of evaluation policy. My paper addresses the issue of making evaluation policy and with special attention to the vertical and horizontal dimension, emanating from the understanding of policy as a contested, interactive process and activity of many hands. Specifically, in my PhD-project, I will be looking at the making of evaluation policy in the education field, a frequently evaluated domain. This paper will be devoted to the discussion of the concept of evaluation policy and the different dimensions of policy, that is the vertical and horizontal aspect (Colebatch 1998) with examples of evaluation policies from the educational field. This also involves evaluation steering which affect and constitute the conditions for how the evaluation practice can evolve (Hanberger 2013; Foss Hansen 2013). Hence, this sheds light on the constant question of power in evaluation policy. I argue that evaluation policy is an important concept that needs a different or more inclusive approach emerging from the literature on policy work. It also has to be recognized that the practice of evaluation policy is not so much about implementing an already formulated evaluation policy, but rather about creating evaluation policies which is a process of social construction, of collective sense making. In conclusion, this project, by closely examining evaluation policy, sheds new light on the processes of making evaluation policy, and how this can be researched.