Centralisation in an era of decentralisation – on the contradictory governing of school

Abstract

The movement towards greater decentralisation is not seldom the obvious starting point for the study of school governance. In this article this assumption is analysed and problematised based on a reading of central education policy texts related to the last two curriculum reforms for the Swedish compulsory school ( Lpo 94, Lgr 11) and the EU’s overall growth policy from 2000 onwards. The result shows that although the school’s governance rightly can be described in terms of decentralisation, there are several parallel movements that point in the opposite direction. An increased influence from the EU over Swedish education policy, an increased central interest for school content issues, concentration of free schools to a few large corporations, and that teachers’ professional judgments are replaced by standardised and centrally-designed material are discussed as four such processes. The assumption of school decentralisation thus requires qualification and clarification in order to serve as a basis for the study of school governance.