Vouchers na Suécia
Alexsander Rosa
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Voucher Lessons from Sweden
School choice has come to Sweden in a big way over the past 10 years, confounding widespread perceptions of the Swedes as statists and providing inspiration for supporters of market-based education reform in the U.S.Sweden has the highest rate of taxation in the West and the highest ratio of public spending to GNP of the industrialized nations. For all but nine years during the postwar era, the Social Democrats have ruled this Scandinavian country.
Yet, as a result of a top-to-bottom education reform launched in 1991-92, virtually anyone can start a school in Sweden and receive public funding. Families are free to choose whatever state-subsidized school they prefer for their children, including those run by churches.
After 10 years, what lessons can be learned from Swedish education reform?
School Choice Works
"The main lesson to be learned from the Swedish reforms is that school choice works," concluded Swedish economists and researchers Mikael Sandström and Fredrik Bergström in a January 2003 study for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation. "Sweden has left behind an almost completely centralized system, with tight national control of schooling and a minuscule role for non-governmental institutions."
In short, Sweden has done a 180-degree turn in education over the past decade, in the process generating a number of positive results. Although the U.S. is far behind Sweden and much of Western Europe in school choice--ironically so, given the vibrancy of the American market economy--the researchers believe there are a number of lessons the U.S. can take from Sweden.
Among the positive outcomes they found from Sweden's shift to free educational choice:
- The number of independent schools has increased fivefold. Under Swedish law, they now must be funded equally with the municipal schools--as Swedish public schools are known--once they have received approval to operate.
- Attendance in independent schools has quadrupled.
- Student performance in Sweden's government-run schools has increased, the apparent result of competition from a much-increased supply of schools.
- Most of the independent schools are run by for-profit educational management companies, with no negative effect on the quality of education.
- Free choice under a voucher-style approach has not led to advantages for the elite rich. In fact, poorer Swedes choose independent schools at higher rates than do affluent families.
- While there are differences of opinion within the teaching profession, the Swedish teacher unions have not opposed school choice. Surveys show teachers tend to prefer working in the independent schools because they find the climate for teaching better there.
Were full choice to become the norm in the U.S., perhaps American teachers would begin to wonder why their unions have demonized vouchers. The study notes that when teachers can choose not only among several municipal schools but also many independent schools, they benefit by being able to market their skills and choose a school that best fits their interests.
(...)Two Steps to School Reform
Before reform was launched in Sweden, teachers were employees of the national government, which paid their salaries. Municipal governments ran schools according to national rules and regulations.
The first step in the reform process came in 1991, when legislation transferred responsibility for education from the national government to the localities. Teachers became municipal employees. The omnipotent National Board of Education was scuttled and replaced by the National Agency for Education, charged with setting goals for the school system rather than directing how the goals will be met.
The second step came soon thereafter, when a non-socialist government won election and introduced legislation giving independent schools the right to receive funding from the municipalities on an equal basis with the municipal schools. The National Agency for Education approves all schools that meet specified requirements, such as refraining from discriminatory admissions, charging no fees, and operating in harmony with the national curriculum.
In practice, the National Agency rejects few applications to start schools. For instance, in the year 2000, the Agency approved 125 applications for primary schools and rejected only 13. Rejections mainly were for incomplete applications or lack of evidence the applicants could sustain a school.
"Apart from the Netherlands," the researchers noted, "establishing an independent school is probably easier in Sweden than in any other country."
When the Social Democrats returned to power in 1994, the government did not act to reverse the reforms. Of the seven parties in Parliament, Bergström and Sandström wrote, only the former Communists in the "Left Party," which receives only about 10 percent of the popular vote, flatly oppose parental choice and the right of independent schools to public funding.
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Atenciosamente,
Alexsander da Rosa
Linux User #113925
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Roberto Chiocca
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Alexsander Rosa
"The biggest skirmish may be with teachers, or, more precisely, with their unions. State funding would follow children into free schools, meaning that if lots of new ones open, some state schools will have to close. “The good teachers will find new jobs,” says one Tory aide, blithely—but unions have never been concerned primarily with their more able members. The unions also oppose Tory plans to end central pay bargaining for teachers and to allow schools to pay according to merit.
Here, though, the lessons from Sweden are more optimistic. Swedish teaching unions initially hated the whole idea of free schools—but once they saw that their members liked working in them, says Mr Hultin, they changed their tune. Britain’s teachers too might prefer better-run, less chaotic schools, more freedom over how to teach—and to be rewarded for success. If the Tories stand firm, free schools could be in Britain to stay."
[1] http://hi.baidu.com/wwjww/blog/item/03123278bb7a64e72e73b381.html