Sweden’s decline follows a raft of changes in the late 1980s and early 1990s that transformed the educational landscape. A system that had been largely centralised was devolved to municipalities, teacher training was changed, exams and grades changed, and a voucher system was introduced giving parents the power to choose which school to send their child to. Each child was funded by the state, and if the child chose to go do a different school, the money would follow.
Since then, almost 800 publicly funded private schools – or free schools – have been set up across Sweden, many of them by companies who are allowed to make a profit. In England, the education secretary, Nicky Morgan, has ruled out allowing free schools to be run for profit. This is one of key concerns in the current education debate in Sweden.