Charter schools
The number of independent schools with public funding, so-called charter schools, is growing in Sweden. Following a law change in the 1990s, parents and their children can choose among tuition-free schools, whether municipal or private.
Although private schools have been in existence for as long as there has been compulsory education in Sweden, they were not a wide-spread competitive alternative to municipal schools until the 1992 law provided them with public funding.
These publicly funded non-municipal schools are called friskola (charter school) to differentiate them from tuition-based private schools (of which there are only a handful left in Sweden).
Same rules apply
In Sweden, charter schools must be approved by the Schools Inspectorate and follow the national curricula and syllabuses, just like regular municipal schools.
In 2014, around 17 per cent of compulsory schools and 50 per cent of upper secondary schools were charter schools and they attracted close to 14 per cent of all compulsory school students and 26 per cent of all upper secondary school students.
Sweden has its share of scepticism about running schools for profit. Fears include that profits will take precedence over quality. Advocates of independent schools, on the other hand, note the many positive results found in statistical surveys. One is that parents with children who attend independent schools are more satisfied than those with children in municipal schools.