Ekonomi eller politiska beslut : Vad styr fristående gymnasieskolors lokalisering?

Sammanfattning: In the beginning of the 1990s the responsibility for the schools shifted from the government to the local authorities. This started an era with a freedom of choice for students where they themselves could choose which school to go to. The new system also opened up the possibility for independent private schools to exist side by side with local authority held schools. The overall aim of this study is to determine the factors that affect the location of these independent schools and the geographical pattern these independent schools create. The study in this paper is based on materials from statistics and interviews. The statistics is from SCB (Statistics Sweden), Skolverket (a government agency that work for the Ministry of Education) and Skolinspektionen (a government agency that supervises that schools follow laws and regulations) and the interviews are with principals and owners of independent schools and representatives from Skolverket, Skolinspektionen and Friskolornas riksförbund (The national association for independent schools). Since the 1990s the independent schools have become nearly as many as the local authority held schools, but are concentrated to 41 percent of Sweden’s municipalities. When comparing this to the local authority held schools that are in 96 percent of Sweden’s municipalities means that the independent schools are in high numbers in a few municipalities. The study shows a geographical pattern of independent schools mainly in large cities. In this paper I examine if the concentration of independent schools in a small part of Sweden’s municipalities is due to political reasons or economical reasons. In conclusion the study indicates that economical factors is the main reasons for their geographical location. The main reasons for locating in urban areas are based on the number of students, diversity, opportunity, and the closeness to universities but also the closeness to entertainment as cafés.