En likvärdig skola?

Sweden is one of the countries which has signed and endorsed The UnitedNations Convention on the Rights of the Child from 1989. According to thisconvention, all children have the same rights irrespective of sex, race or religion. Theconvention is in line with Swedish education policy, which for a long time hasasserted that schooling must be open to all. The Swedish curriculum stresses that allhuman beings are of equal value and states, amongst other things, that “educationmust be suited to the needs and requirements of each pupil”. However, there isreason to strongly question whether Sweden in practice lives up to these ideals andaims. During 2005, the National Agency of Education made inspections of theschools in Malmoe and, in a report from 2006, drew the conclusion that schooling inthe city was characterized by large local inequalities with regard to both opportunitiesand results. One aim of this study is to use the representation of Malmoe´s schoolsgiven in the National Agency report to ascertain whether Malmoe is achieving thegoal of giving all pupils an equal education; ultimately, I pose the question whetherMalmo can live up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Another aim is todevelop understanding of the school as a place of normative and regulating practicesin relation to a changed and multicontextual childhood. The empirical data for thisstudy is the said report from the National Agency of Education