Mostly it's in Swedish media, though. And what's been most criticized is the ability to extract profit from state funds, given that the biggest independent schools are owned by off-shore VC companies. The situation is similar with Swedish healthcare.

See my other comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262430

Yeah, any data to back this up would be great

Any piece of info in particular you wanted sourced, or just all of it? You might need to whip out Google translate.

Jakobsson, Anders; Oscarsson, Magnus; Karlsson, Karl - Göran. Det fria skolvalet hotar kvaliteten Svensk skola. http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2010/12/09/forskare-fria-skol...

About Sweden's plummeting PISA scores in reading:

PISA 2009 – Executive Summary, OECD 2010 page 15

Now, since I'm not in favor of any form of mandatory schooling it doesn't really matter to me exactly why the Swedish schools suck... But you must keep in mind that there was another, rather large reform in the early 90's: the responsibility for the schools were transferred from the state to the municipalities. This hasn't exactly worked out well either and surely has had impact on the PISA rankings (see e.g Maciej Zaremba's articles in DN, http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/maciej-zaremba-en-forolampning-... ).

Mr Ledin goes one better. “We do not mind being compared to McDonald's,” he says. “If we're religious about anything, it's standardisation. We tell our teachers it is more important to do things the same way than to do them well.”

Looks like it's from 2008. I'll be happy to hear from anyone who has a closer experience with the Kunskapsskolan.

I actually went to Kunskapsskolan as the equivalent of a High School student. Graduated in 2005. It work out very well for me, the freedom to go about the curriculum at my own pace suited me perfectly. The experience of going there was very much like what you would find at a university. The school demanded a very high level of motivation and discipline. And this makes it problematic, since quite a lot of students at that age were ill prepared to face that.

I might be hesitant to say that this reform has worked out well for Sweden as a whole, as I think for-profit entities in charge of public education is a step in the wrong direction.

Definitely the wrong direction, because it can go wrong on so many ways.

Myself I am a victim of for-profit education (well, my spouse is), effectively locked in by contract at a company for 10+ years more. It sounds so good in the beginning, but once you finish your studies and you stand in front of that loong walk...

How is your spouse locked by contract for 10 years due to for-profit education?

"The school demanded a very high level of motivation and discipline. And this makes it problematic, since quite a lot of students at that age were ill prepared to face that."

Cherrypicking of the self motivated ones will reduce the level of motivation and self-discipline seen in the 'safety net' schools. Not good for society as a whole. I worry about this in the UK.

It's interesting that no mention was made of the Sweden's extremely poor policies and record with respect to homeschooling. There has been a lot of press the past few years over the Johansson family (child seized for being homeschooled) to the Himmelstrand family (severe fines for homeschooling). Here is a link to an HSLDA collection of other links that specifically address homeschooling in Sweden (http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Sweden/).

The school system in Sweden is many things (despicable, horrendous, etc etc), but free market it is not. These private schools don't operate on a free market - the government supplies the "customers" (students) under penalty of prison* for the students' parents, for crying out loud.

* Or possibly even worse: a student who doesn't go to school is liable to end up in the clutches of the meddling welfare board.

I think I didn't really get this comment. Care to explain further?

I'll try, but I don't see how I can make it any simpler.

These "free market" schools receive payments from the government for each student they have.

The government mandates that everyone attend school between the ages of 7 and 16 (or 6 and 15).

This is not a free market. You cannot have the government create customers like this in a free market.

That's a BS semantic argument. First off you can be 'home schooled'. Far more importantly the question is does privatizing the school system improve average student performance OR lower costs and the answer is no.

It's not bullshit. The government are effectively outsourcing education to private companies. That's always going to result in rent-seeking on the part of the private companies. And it's not the same as free market/full privatisation, where the parents would pay the schools.

(Not that I think private schooling would be better or cheaper than publicly funded schooling.)

What on earth do you mean? Someone (the article) claimed the system was free market. I showed otherwise. It's about as far from semantic BS arguments as you can come.

I was not debating the efficiency of the private schools visavi public schools. Introducing strawmen is stupid.

Also: home schooling has been illegal in Sweden since 2010.

People still home-school in Sweden. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling_international_sta...

More to the point, while it's mandated that people buy car insurance few people argue that that's not a 'free market' because regulation is not the same thing as a state monopoly. After-all people also need food.

"Status: Virtually illegal"

Yeah, you got me (insert rolleyes).

Car insurance also doesn't operate on a free market, for the reason you cite. I don't care that "few people" would argue it (appeal to authority; you like fallacies don't you?). You seem to think that something is either a state monopoly or a free market, but it is not so.

Words gain meaning based on what the largest group of people think. If 90% of the population think grapes refers to grapes including the stem and you try and restrict the definition further the only way to back that up is an appeal to authority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abhar-iran.JPG

PS: Most economists accept that many completely unregulated market tends to monopoly's which try to extract rents. However, once a monopoly shows up they no longer accept that it's a 'free market' so the term 'free market' does not mean what happens when government does not interfere with a market. After that it get's complected as to where the line is drawn between free market and something else, however the bar is surprisingly high as for example moderate sin taxes don't prevent free markets.

I very much doubt that the Swedish school system can be seriously described as despicable or horrendous, even if it has fallen from its former glory. Would you care to elaborate?

All mandatory school systems are despicable and horrendous. The first major issue is the coercion involved: they control a child's life for 9 years (or even 12 years in some countries). It's absurd. This alone should be reason enough to dissolve the entire public school system (and possibly put various Ministers of Eduction to trial).

The second major issue is that they are a tool the state uses to indoctrinate children (naive by nature) with whatever the correct values of the day are. Prussia (where public schooling originated) needed obedient soldiers, modern-day Sweden needs a large underclass of socialists willing to support various hare-brained political schemes. The schools reflect this. What happens, for instance, if you call homosexuality "not normal"[1] in a Swedish school? It gets you an F in biology and a label as a "homophobe" in the state-run media[2]. One wonders what happened to students who questioned communism in the Soviet Union.

See "Deschooling society" by Ivan Illich, "Underground history of the American school system" by John Taylor Gatto.

[1] Which is surely true, statistically speaking.

[2] http://www.svt.se/nyheter/regionalt/abc/homofobi-gav-underka...

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