Towards a European policy discourse on compulsory education: The case of Sweden

Introduction

While there was already a growing number of institutions and programmes facilitating European cooperation, the launch of the Lisbon Strategy in March 2000 marked a new phase of Europeanising education (Dale, 2009; Grek and Lawn, 2009; Nordin, 2014a). For the first time, a common strategic policy goal was introduced for Europe ‘to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion before 2010’ (Council of the European Union, 2000). This was also the first time that the Council of the European Union explicitly promoted a convergence among education systems in Europe (Grek, 2008). Though still bound to the principle of subsidiarity agreed on in the Maastricht Treaty, the Lisbon Strategy led to the development of a new flexible governance tool that relies on ‘soft law’; that is, the open method of coordination (OMC). Unlike hard law, which may involve treaty articles, regulations and directives that create legally binding obligations for both member states and individuals, soft law is built around goals, benchmarking, recommendations, joint reports, action plans and indicators, thus exercising persuasive power instead of legal power (Holford, 2008; Lange and Alexiadou, 2007; Wahlström, 2010). The launch of a common policy goal, and thus also a growing need for comparable data in order to monitor and follow up on national progress, led to the establishment of a special unit within Eurostat focused on education and culture. Although cultural and symbolic aspects were still present, the production and use of numerical data became increasingly important as the driving force for coordinating national educational reforms within the European Union (EU). The OMC also contributed to other numerical initiatives, such as the establishment of a standing group on indicators and benchmarks, which agreed on 29 indicators for measuring education systems. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also eventually came to play an increasingly important role in the process of Europeanising education through the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) measurements starting in 2000, taking the production and use of comparable statistics even further (Grek, 2014; Lawn and Grek, 2012; Meyer and Benavot, 2013). Taken together, the increased production and use of comparable data can be seen as part of an emerging data-driven European educational policy space which, beyond just informing policymakers, is itself becoming a basis for governing education (Fenwick et al., 2014).

At the time of the planned mid-term review of the progress of the Lisbon Strategy in the mid-2000s, the OMC was heavily criticised and accused of being ‘too soft’ (Alexiadou, 2014; Lawn and Grek, 2012). In both the complementary report (the Kok Report) delivered by the independent high-level group formed by the European Commission (Kok, 2004) and the official mid-term review (European Commission, 2005), poor coordination was discussed as a major cause for the disappointing delivery regarding the Lisbon objectives. As a consequence of the emerging ‘European crisis discourse’ that followed (Nordin, 2014b; Robertson, 2008), the former president of the European Commission, Manuel Barroso, said the following in his speech at the European Ideas Network in 2005: ‘We will go into the Member States and engage in an ever more intense discussion with civil society…’ (Barroso, 2005: 3). When launching Europe 2020 as a successor to the Lisbon Strategy, this goal was followed up and the European Commission reinforced the need for an extended involvement in national educational policymaking and a new structure for monitoring progress (European Commission, 2010). The emerging crisis discourse thus contributes to the development of a more complex and contradictory discourse on governing education within the EU, where decentralisation and deregulation are increasingly accompanied by re-regulation and re-centralisation (see Grek and Lindgren, 2015).

The aim of this article is to contribute to a deepened understanding of this new and complex European discourse on governing education by examining how elements of re-regulating and re-centralising education are being stressed in the context of Europe 2020. Empirically, the article is developed in the following two parts: first, it gives an account of the new integrated structure of coordinating education policy within the context of Europe 2020. This part focuses on the country-specific recommendations as a vital part of the policy discourse on strengthening the role of the EU in coordinating national school policy. The second part examines the effects of these country-specific recommendations on national school policy using Sweden as an empirical case, focusing especially on the 2011 compulsory school reform.

Methodological approach

Theoretically, this article is inspired by discourse institutionalism (DI), which emphasises the role of ideas and discourse in explaining institutional change and continuity (Schmidt, 2010, 2011). Traditionally, neo-institutionalist theories have focused on institutional continuities based on cultural framing, rational choice or path-dependent history. In order to better facilitate an analysis capable of analysing both continuities and institutional change in a complex world, discursive institutionalism concentrates on the role of ideas and discourse in altering institutions. Schmidt (2011: 107) observed as follows:

Discourse institutionalism, by contrast, takes a more dynamic view of change (and continuity) by concentrating on the substantive ideas developed and conveyed by ‘sentient’ agents in discursive interaction that inform their policy-oriented actions which in turn serve to alter (or maintain) institutions.

DI does not merely see discourse as the embodiment of ideas, but also as the interactive process in which ideas are generated and communicated. Put differently, ideas are carried out by both sentient agents and discourse, which helps to explain the connection between ideas and collective action (Schmidt, 2011). Education policy is thus seen as a form of communication involving a variety of actors at the transnational, national and/or local levels discussing, deliberating and negotiating policy ideas. By focusing on the complex interplay of ideas and discourse within and between different policy levels, DI offers a perspective that goes beyond both the methodological nationalism that has characterised much of the curriculum theory tradition (see Thomson, 2006) and a simplified linear understanding of transnational policy actors writing the education policy script for nation states (see Lingard and Ozga, 2007).

DI distinguishes between two kinds of discourse, which also constitutes the theoretical framing of this study: a coordinative and a communicative discourse. The coordinative discourse refers to the communicative interaction among leading actors involved in the policy process, such as government officials, consultants, experts, lobbyists and business and union leaders – actors that are developing shared cognitive and normative beliefs and, in doing so, forming powerful discourse coalitions. The communicative discourse refers to processes of public legitimation, including actors involved in opinion formation, such as politicians, party members, spin doctors, media, interest groups and different kinds of opinion makers (Schmidt, 2011). Although these two discourses are understood as intertwined, coordinative discourse is more heavily weighted towards cognitive justification among policy elites, while communicative discourse strives to gain public legitimacy. Put differently, education policy is seen here as a communicative practice involving many different actors that are working within different policy arenas and arguing on the basis of different agendas and policy texts as materialised expressions of such complex communication. In the following examination, the EU and its institutions are seen as representatives of the abovementioned policy elite. The first part will thus focus on the coordinative discourse as expressed in central official documents. The second part examines the communicative discourse and the interaction between the EU and the Swedish government, focusing mainly on compulsory school policy.

In addition to the DI framework, critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used for the more systematic text analysis (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999; Wodak, 2008). CDA emphasises the need to look at texts as ‘sites of struggle’ in a coordinative sense, where policymakers with different ideological agendas struggle for dominance (Wodak, 2008). However, official policy texts are also simultaneously part of a communicative discourse seeking public legitimacy for dominating policy perspectives. Policy texts are thus seen as parts of social practices which continuously make and remake educational institutions. In order to capture how educational ideas are coordinated within the EU and then communicated through country-specific recommendations, Reisigl’s (2008) four different categories of discursive strategies have been used as analytical categories. The first strategy is nomination, which refers to the description of different groups, phenomena and ideas. The second strategy, predication, refers to the positive and/or negative attribution given to the discursively constructed categories mentioned above. The third strategy, argumentation, concerns the arguments used to legitimise and/or delegitimise different positions. The fourth and final strategy, perspectivation, refers to the basic principles upon which the three preceding strategies are based.

The analysis builds on a close reading of official policy texts, including Europe 2020, Education and Training 2020, the country-specific recommendations for Sweden from 2011 to 2014 and Sweden’s national reform programme from 2012 to 2015.

Europe 2020 and a new structure for coordinating national policy

When launching a new strategic document for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in 2010 (Europe 2020), the former president of the European Commission, Manuel Barroso, stated in the preface that, ‘The crisis is a wake-up call, the moment where we recognise that “business as usual” would consign us to a gradual decline, to the second rank of the new global order. This is Europe’s moment of truth’ (European Commission, 2010). It is thus out of a sense of crisis and lack of time that the future plans for Europe were drawn (Nordin, 2014b). The argumentative strategy is to sketch a negative picture, leaving Europe with no other alternative than to act in accordance with what is proposed in Europe 2020. The following areas are identified as key policy areas:

These three policy areas were seen as mutually reinforcing each other, together contributing to the development of a ‘European social market economy’. In order to steer progress towards these prioritised areas, the member states agreed on five common targets that could be accurately compared using sufficient and reliable data. However, despite demands for comparability, the targets had to be broad enough to manage national diversities among the member states. For the educational sector, the following target was identified:

In addition to the three prioritised areas mentioned above, seven ‘flagship initiatives’ were established which identified what had to be done at both the EU and the member-state level. Issues of relevance for the educational sector can be found in several of the initiatives. The need to adapt to a more flexible labour market and to increase educational outcomes at all levels, building on key competencies from pre-school to tertiary education, were common features that the educational initiatives were intended to enhance (Nordin and Sundberg, 2016). Although still under the principle of subsidiarity, compulsory schooling was now more explicitly part of the discussion than in the Lisbon Strategy. In Europe 2020, even the national school curricula are subject to guidance from the European Commission, which prescribes a focus on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Europe 2020 thus means a destabilisation of the role of the nation state in governing compulsory education, opening up for new forms of multilevel governance (cf. Lingard and Ozga, 2007).

When the new framework for governing progress within Europe 2020 was presented, it was obvious that numerical comparisons had become increasingly important as the basis for governing Europe (see Lawn and Grek, 2012). Clearer goals and transparent benchmarks were stressed as central in order to better monitor progress. The overall architecture for coordinating policy within Europe 2020 was called ‘the European semester’ and rested on two pillars. The first was the thematic approach that works at both a transnational EU level and a national member-state level in realising the targets set out in Europe 2020, with the seven flagship initiatives as the main resources. The second was the system of country-specific recommendations facilitating enhanced cooperation between the European Commission and the member states in identifying so-called ‘national bottlenecks’. It was a more integrated approach to policy coordination than before, making areas such as compulsory education governable through embeddedment into related policy areas where the EU holds stronger legal power. The European semester runs from November until July each year and starts with the Annual Growth Survey, where progress towards the long-term strategic goals are measured and discussed. The EU leaders meet in March each year to discuss common directions for structural policies in response to the survey. In April, member states then report back to the European Commission on intended initiatives, which, in turn, are examined by the commission who then makes a series of country-specific recommendations. These recommendations are then discussed among the EU leaders in June and finally incorporated into national reform agendas. On the whole, Europe 2020 establishes the basis for a new and more complex governance of national education policy, including compulsory education, since it becomes embedded into several related policy areas, such as the labour market, poverty reduction, structural inequalities and innovation and entrepreneurship. Education is seen as an all-embracing solution to whatever the problem may be. Europe 2020 also has a more explicit focus on compulsory schooling when it comes to coordinating the overall orientation and the organising principles for the knowledge content to be taught in schools.

Communicating compulsory education through country-specific recommendations

Up until the late 1970s, the Swedish education system could be characterised as highly centralised and regulated. Educational reforms and their implementation were centrally governed by the state through, for example, a detailed national curricula and a vast number of regulations concerning educational resources. During the 1980s, dissatisfaction grew among politicians regarding the fact that the Swedish school system had not been able to live up to the expectations of reducing societal inequality based on gender, class and geographical origin. As a result, politicians urged for new forms of governing education inspired by an emerging neo-liberal discourse emphasising efficiency and the introduction of market principles into the public sector (Lundahl, 2002). In response to the critique, new reforms were launched in 1991 in line with this emerging neo-liberal agenda, decentralising responsibility for the Swedish school system from the central government to Sweden’s 290 municipalities. Management by objectives and results replaced the former content-oriented central control as guarantor of an equivalent education system. ¹ While the politicians still ultimately decided on the objectives and the results, it was now up to the teaching profession to select and organise the subject content to be taught in schools (Sundberg and Wahlström, 2012).

However, like the EU, Sweden experienced a growing dissatisfaction due to the lack of progress during the mid-2000s, which resulted in the emergence of an extensive crisis discourse within both right- and left-wing parties and in a powerful discourse coalition with mass media (Nordin, 2014b). A vast number of newspaper articles and radio and TV programmes were produced which discussed Sweden’s failure in the PISA tests. The crisis of the Swedish school system was a prominent theme in almost every political debate at the time, resulting in a growing ‘discursive pressure’ for new and extensive reforms. The crisis discourse became the major argumentative strategy for the Swedish government to launch an extensive reform package in 2011, including a new school law, a new teacher education programme and a new national curriculum for compulsory schools. The overall aim of the curriculum reform was to strengthen national governance through a more centralised control apparatus and to reintroduce a clearer focus on subject knowledge (although this focus was discussed in terms of competencies) (Ministry of Education, 2007). The political argument was that the decentralisation of authoritative power from the state to the municipalities and the teaching profession had led to a more unequal school system. This led to an increased number of national tests starting in grade three (instead of grade five as before). It also resulted in stronger government involvement in the selection and teaching of subject content in line with the logic that prevailed before the 1980s. The Swedish compulsory school reform of 2011 thus shares the same idea communicated in Europe 2020 that authoritative power has to be centralised in order to reduce the effects of the growing crisis discourse.

Towards a European policy discourse on compulsory education

Due to the extensive crisis discourse that emerged in Europe around the mid-2000s, demands were raised by policy actors at different levels to strengthen the coordination and monitoring of national policymaking in the field of education (Nordin, 2014b; Robertson, 2008). In this article, I have tried to elaborate on the consequences of these demands for national school policy in the context of Europe 2020 using Sweden as an empirical reference.

First of all, the result shows that the launch of Europe 2020 means a discursive shift towards an increased interest in compulsory education at both the transnational and the national level. In order to reduce the number of upper secondary school dropouts, compulsory school is seen as a vital policy area to master. Despite a high level of autonomy, due to the decentralisation of the Swedish school system during the 1980s and 1990s, the curricula have remained a prerogative of central government. When the European Commission charges the Swedish school system with focusing the curricula on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship, and introduces competencies as a principle in organising the knowledge content, it challenges the very idea of the curricula being the main government tool in governing Swedish compulsory school. In the case of Sweden, establishing a communicative process around national curricula contributes to the development of new parallel forms of governance. The shared normative argument communicated by both the EU and the Swedish government is that the only alternative is to re-centralise power. But rather than a linear reallocation of authoritative power from one arena to another, the result shows how a shared crisis discourse gives rise to an increased parallel policy production at both the transnational and the national level. The EU and Sweden become co-producers of policy explicitly emphasising the need to focus on compulsory education in order to combat both societal and individual problems.

Secondly, when looking specifically at the communication between the EU and the Swedish government regarding compulsory education, two major communicative strategies have been identified. The first one is through discursive embeddedment, which involves implicitly embedding compulsory school issues in the realm of the labour market or fiscal policy and thereby making the compulsory school indirectly governable. This is the major strategy used up until 2013 when the European Commission – and, even more so, the Swedish government – began to speak explicitly about the Swedish compulsory school as a vital policy area in need of extensive reformation. Due to declining results in international tests, the Swedish strategy of silence in terms of transnational references no longer seems to be an option among Swedish politicians and policymakers. The Swedish government now seeks policy guidance from both the EU and the OECD, working in close cooperation in order to avoid further public embarrassment. This result thus shows the force exercised through the production and communication of comparable data, which, as shown in this article, materialises itself through extensive reforms and the establishment of new national institutions at all policy levels.

To sum up, the result shows a new and more explicit European discourse on governing compulsory education emerging from 2013 onwards, which introduces elements of re-regulation and re-centralisation into an already complex governance practice (see Grek and Lindgren, 2015). The result also shows that the EU’s lack of power in educational matters concerning compulsory education does not necessarily lead to less European governance, but rather more governance and different kinds of governance; in the case of Sweden, more EU recommendations required more Swedish policy reforms. The result shows a Europeanisation of education, characterised by a co-production of new education policy putting compulsory education at the forefront of the policy agenda.

The results in this study are based on a limited number of policy documents and restricted to the communication between the EU and the Swedish government through country-specific recommendations. Further studies are needed using different kinds of empirical material produced in other contexts in order to strengthen the argument. Understanding compulsory education as part of the process of the Europeanisation of education is a challenging area of research still in its infancy. Different perspectives looking at different contexts have to be applied in order to develop a better and more thorough understanding of this multifaceted phenomenon.