En likvärdig skola för alla?

In this essay we discuss how the decentralisation of the Swedish school system affects the concept of “equal opportunity school”. We investigate the development from both a historical and contemporary perspective, in order to identify changes over time. The central question of the essay is how the decentralisation of the school system affects the teacher’s perspective and experiences of the government’s framework about “equal opportunity school”? The analysis is based on four qualitative, semi structured, direct interviews with respondents both active in municipal schools situated in the Malmö council and with more than thirty years of experience in their profession. Our analysis of the interviews show that both respondents experience the overall situation in the schools has deteriorated from an equal opportunity aspect since the decentralisation of the school system. We discuss the individual pupil’s situation from Bourdieu’s concept, habitus and how it affects the pupil’s experiences and behaviour in school and also how the school contributes to shape the pupil’s habitus. Furthermore we argue that the new form of evaluation has affected the quality of the school system and that it has increased the public tension regarding public schools. The final result of the essay is that the Swedish school system does not provide an “equal opportunity school” and that it has become more segregated after the decentralisation process. According to the results of the essay the school system may once again be reformed from a municipal towards a private system. The rift between the municipal schools and the private schools appear to widen and since it hitherto has been harder to evaluate the private schools it is not unlikely that the standard of an “equal opportunity school” disappears in the future and that the school policy framework has to be revised