Den ensamma rektorn med det omöjliga uppdraget - Dagliga prioriteringar till följd av en motstridig styrning från stat och kommun

Sammanfattning: The today decentralised Swedish school system is argued to be within a crisis. Furthermore the debate on re-centralisation of the school system is active. The school principals, as central actors for their units, are part of a bureaucratic and hierarchical chain of command controlled by both the state and municipalities. Hence, this paper focuses on what steering difficulties school principals experience and how they handle them. Therefore, this study has conducted five semi-structured interviews with questions derived from the theoretical approach framing organisations, steering, middle managers and principals within the public sector. Phenomenography has been used to analyse the variation in the collected material. To conclude, this paper states that all principals experience conflicting requirements, specifically regarding state requirements to work towards goals such as equivalence and the economic goals created by both the state and the municipalities. Nevertheless, the school principals describe different conflicting requirements resulting in steering difficulties and various ways to cope with the challenges. This study argues that, reasons for the variation in answers are interesting for further research and could be due to the size of a unit or municipality, municipal conditions as well as policy and routines, personality of school principals or their leadership.