New trends in Swedish educational policy created new conditions for teachers’
career development. Since the middle of the 19th century two competing
teacher groups – grammar-school teachers, adjunkter and lektorer versus
elementary-school teachers småskollärare and folkskollärare – have seen their
professional status successively enhanced with the help of the state
bureaucratic apparatus and through laws and regulations. This is how the
teacher groups' professional claims vis-à-vis parents and the clergy were
asserted once upon a time.