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by gahahaha 5078 days ago
The experiences that were made from privatizing Swedish schools were:

* generally worse results and increased inequality

* 5 companies dominate the market, and makes huge profits

* Sweden has fallen from 3rd to 19th on the PISA test in reading.

* huge quality differences between schools

* schools have become a "sorting machine" where motivated parents and pupils choose certain schools and avoid other schools.

* The experience from Sweden, and research from OECD shows that more competition in school does not produce better results.

4 comments

Can you provide any links?
On PISA tests:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Stu... http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/01/why-gove-no-lo...

Article from Swedish Radio:

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&...

Report on OECD report:

http://www.antidotenews.org.uk/?p=628&dm_i=LEV,ACD6,33QO...

Mostly it's in Swedish media, though. And what's been most criticized is the ability to extract profit from state funds, given that the biggest independent schools are owned by off-shore VC companies. The situation is similar with Swedish healthcare.

Mr Ledin goes one better. “We do not mind being compared to McDonald's,” he says. “If we're religious about anything, it's standardisation. We tell our teachers it is more important to do things the same way than to do them well.”
Yeah, any data to back this up would be great
Any piece of info in particular you wanted sourced, or just all of it? You might need to whip out Google translate.

Jakobsson, Anders; Oscarsson, Magnus; Karlsson, Karl - Göran. Det fria skolvalet hotar kvaliteten Svensk skola. http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2010/12/09/forskare-fria-skol...

About Sweden's plummeting PISA scores in reading:

PISA 2009 – Executive Summary, OECD 2010 page 15

Now, since I'm not in favor of any form of mandatory schooling it doesn't really matter to me exactly why the Swedish schools suck... But you must keep in mind that there was another, rather large reform in the early 90's: the responsibility for the schools were transferred from the state to the municipalities. This hasn't exactly worked out well either and surely has had impact on the PISA rankings (see e.g Maciej Zaremba's articles in DN, http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/maciej-zaremba-en-forolampning-... ).