Marketisation of adult education in Sweden

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyse how formal adult education in Sweden is enacted locally. For this analysis, the data consist of a nationwide survey sent to Swedish municipalities, background data on municipalities from public statistics and interviews with representatives of 20 municipalities. Swedish formal adult education, which includes general, vocational and Swedish for immigrants courses, is a responsibility of the municipality, but courses are not necessarily organised internally by the municipality. The results show how adult education is enacted in different ways. There are systems for outsourcing courses to various other providers, typically private training companies. There are thus both private and public providers, but courses are paid for by the municipality, which is also responsible of quality assurance. The quality assurance is typically enacted with a focus on students, via surveys and statistics on outcomes, but quality measures also target providers. Swedish adult education is characterised by extensive marketisation with many private providers and a broad supply of courses, but the municipalities are experiencing quality problems among providers, and some municipalities are considering extending their internal provision. There is also a labour-market focus where training programmes to improve adults’ employability are prioritised.

Swedish Vocational Adult Education in the Wake of Marketisation

“…However, this flexible approach brings organisational problems, including shortterm procurement contracts with external providers that make it difficult to plan and the risk of over-establishment when the same courses are offered by several authorised providers (cf. Andersson & Muhrman, 2019, 2021a. Problems are also identified concerning the outcomes of flexible distance courses, such as lack of development of social skills, which are needed in the labour market, and this is a reason for providing more school-based and fewer distance-based courses.…”

“…In 2020, about 50 percent of MAE was organised by publicly funded, independent schools, mainly owned by private companies (SNAE, 2021b). There are also high levels of internal marketisation in MAE, in terms of quality assurance work and competition with other providers or organisers, including public, municipal-owned organisers (Andersson & Muhrman, 2021a;Muhrman & Andersson, 2021). However, regardless of which actor organises education, it is always the municipality that is responsible for its quality and accessibility for citizens.…”

“…This represents a tension between desirable market freedom and the possibility of administrative control and quality assurance that is often seen in marketised education systems (Bjursell, 2016;Rönnberg, 2012). In an earlier part of the current research project (Andersson & Muhrman, 2021a), we provided an overview of how municipalities in Sweden combined internal and external MAE providers and chose different types of procurement for external courses. The study also showed the importance of quality control systems when hiring external providers.…”

“…This study continues to analyse policy enactment (Ball et al, 2012;Braun et al, 2010) in Swedish adult education (Andersson & Muhrman, 2021a;Holmqvist et al, 2021;Muhrman & Andersson, 2021) with a focus on VET. From our perspective, the connection between education policy and practice is seen not as a rational process of implementation, but as a complex process of enactment that includes the interpretation and translation of policy into local practice (Ball et al, 2012).…”

“Quality Problems” in Swedish Municipal Adult Education : The Micropolitics of Quality Construed in the Audit Society

“…In another study about the marketization of MAE, Andersson and Muhrman (2021) show that quality assurance processes play a central role in the procurement process where municipalities outsource MAE to external providers (Fejes & Holmqvist, 2019;Holmqvist, 2021;Holmqvist, Fejes, & Nylander, 2020;. In such settings, quality criteria (or indicators) can be used as a way for a municipality to keep control of its provision as it can choose to focus on quality and/or instead of price during a procurement process (Holmqvist, 2021).…”