The Swedish Experiment with Localised Control of Time Schedules: Policy problem representations

Abstract

Swedish compulsory schools are the most autonomous in Europe regarding time allocation and time management. Still, the Swedish state decided to take this even further, when introducing an experiment that permits some compulsory schools to abandon the regulations of the national time schedule. The aim of this study is to explore and analyse the representations of the policy problem that the experiment with local time schedules is designed to solve. Taking a post‐positivist approach to policy analysis and drawing on official documents, the task is to uncover and contextualise these representations and to ask what remains untouched. The four representations of the problem which the experiment addressed all have the common denominator of the experiment producing a particular effect: to break through stagnation, to strengthen management by objectives, to remove an obsolete means of steering education, or to increase individualisation. Roughly, the effect‐assumption takes into account either that a change will take place in schools or that changes that already have taken place will be legitimised.