In recent months, there have been many proposals in the school area from the Social Democrats, whose election strategy is, among other things, about going hard on for-profit schools.
But even among the parties on the right there is now a desire to change the school system.
– It is important that you have freedom of choice at school, but we see major flaws in the independent school system and it must be regulated, says Fredrik Malm, school policy spokesperson for L.
On several points, L agrees with M, KD and SD about what needs to be done. In the event of a change of government, the four parties will, among other things, put forward proposals to change the school fee system, make school choice compulsory for everyone and limit how far before the start of school you can put your child in the queue for a certain school.
Stop for profit distribution
Another thing that Ulf Kristersson’s team agrees on is to give the School Inspectorate the opportunity to stop profit distribution from schools that do not maintain a sufficiently high quality.
– If a school has poor quality and the owners simultaneously extract a profit, that is completely unreasonable. It is money that should be used to fix the shortcomings in the school, not end up in the owners’ pockets, says Fredrik Malm (L).
S, MP and V also see profit-taking as a problem, and want to stop profit-sharing for all types of schools, not just low-quality ones.
Toothless suggestion
At the same time, there is criticism of this type of proposal. According to Åsa Plesner, spokeswoman at the think tank Balans and former S candidate, both the left and the right’s proposals for profit freezes are insufficient if you say you want to raise the quality of Swedish schools.
She believes that there are a number of things that school companies that save on tuition can do to keep the money.
– Profit withdrawal is just one thing. They can also use group contributions or buy other businesses or services and thus get around a profit withdrawal ban. So I think it will simply be toothless.
But Lars Hjälmered (M) still believes that this is the right way to go, and says that the details of how it should work will be brought out in an investigation.
– That it can be tricky is a bad argument for not trying to get anything done, he says.